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Daytona 500 hit by low ratings

Y2kTheNewOldies

Y2kTheNewOldies

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2018/02/daytona-500-ratings-overnights-low/


The Daytona 500 earned a 5.1 overnight rating on FOX Sunday, down 22% from last year (6.5), down 16% from 2016 (6.1), and the lowest for the race in at least ten seasons.

It is likely that the 5.1 is the lowest ever for the race, but overnights prior to 2009 were not immediately available.

Austin Dillon‘s win fell below the previous mark of 5.6 in 2014, the last time the 500 aired opposite the Winter Olympics. This year’s race faced lighter Olympic competition than in 2014, when a six-hour rain delay pushed most of the race opposite the Closing Ceremony (9.5). NBC’s competing window this Sunday had only a 4.1.

Daytona 500 overnights have been declining for a decade, but the recent downturn has been especially sharp. The race has failed to crack a 7.0 overnight in four of the past five years, after hitting that mark in each of the previous five.

To put the numbers in perspective, three years ago the Atlanta 500 — not exactly on the level of Daytona — pulled the same 5.1 overnight.

Sunday was Danica Patrick‘s final NASCAR race. It is worth noting that five years ago, her first Daytona 500 had a 10.0 overnight, easily the highest since NASCAR’s 2000s heyday. Patrick had a top ten finish that year.
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Wow 2018 is the lowest viewership for the Daytona 500 according to this article.
 
Restrictor plate races are among the most boring of NASCAR's presentations. This year was little different except for the three "big ones" that managed to take out a good portion of the field. Perhaps one day NASCAR will learn that putting the whole field bumper to bumper isn't the best idea and come up with better ways to prevent excessive speed. It isn't much fun watching your driver lead the pack for many laps only to have another team draft by him at the last minute. But NASCAR never seems to learn. Maybe when the glare of empty seats blinds the drivers they will wise up.
 
Some people say that baseball is boring. I disagree. But you'll never be able to convince me that watching a bunch of cars drive in a circle is any more fun or interesting to watch.
 
Nathan O'Dan said:
It's the wrecks people watch for. I'll watch when they are on a road course like Sonoma or Watkins Glen.
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Popular but incorrect statement. In the old days there was almost constant passing - always something going on. In the plate races it is follow the leader until cars team up and draft past the leader then someone bobbles and wrecks half the field. It would take an idiot to sit there for 4-5 hours just waiting for a wreck that takes 20 seconds and most likely collects his/her favorite driver. The introduction of the aero packages has resulted in cars very difficult to drive in packs and there are a lot of young and very impatient drivers out there now.

NASCAR is now reaping the rewards of some very stupid and ill thought out decisions by the France family.

No question that the two road courses are much more fun to watch (at least on TV) than the 1.5 mile ovals.
 
Just about all conventional sports viewing is down. Some of the NFL decline is attributable to the left/right divide over the anthem, but don't underestimate the impact of NFL Red Zone on that league's ratings. Many fans -- especially the ever-increasing numbers who either wager on football or play fantasy football -- hardly ever watch any one game all the way through. They're on Red Zone, watching only scores and scoring threats.
 
to be honest, as a NASCAR fan for a long time, i can fully give you non-NASCAR fans a explanation for sagging ratings on TV for the sport.

the NASCAR popularity bubble has finally busted, it busted in a period between 2007-2011 when Jimmie Johnson was dominating the Cup Series and at the same time, The Great Recession took affect and hurt the sport, sponsors left the sport left and right due to the economy collapsing and people couldn't afford NASCAR Tickets anymore and stop going to the races. and on top of this, when NASCAR peak, it was the late 90s-early 2000s, NASCAR in 2004 introduce the playoff concept into motorsports calling it "The Chase to the Race" for the Cup Seres in which 10 drivers battled it out in a separate playoff standing system during the final 10 races of the season, it was tweaked a few times in which the amount of drivers extended to 12 in 2007, then 13 in 2013 (due to a scandal at Richmond, the last race before the 10 races playoff that year that saw 3 teams involved in messing up the outcome of that race so drivers in 2 of those teams would get in the playoffs, only for NASCAR to drop the hammer on one team and drop one of that teams drivers out of the playoffs and replaces that person with a driver that was screwed out of it, and added a extra driver for the same reason) then 16 in 2014 in which they adopted a 4 round playoff in which 3 rounds lasted 3 races each and the final round was the last race of the year in which 4 drivers would be eliminated after each of the 3 rounds and the final 4 drivers battle for the championship in the season finale race. NASCAR extended this playoff concept into it's other top 2 series which are the Xfintiy Series which got a 3 round 9 race playoff with the first 2 rounds last 3 races and the final round being the last race of the season where 12 drivers battled it out with 4 being eliminated after each round until the champion is crowned at the last race of the season, also the Camping World Truck Series also has a 9 race 3 round playoff with 8 drivers battling it out for a champion in which the first 2 rounds are 3 races and the final round is the final race of the season in which 2 drivers are eliminated after each round.

anyway, NASCAR popularity decline continued with fans also getting fed up with the gimmicks as NASCAR devolved from Motorsports to Motorsports Entertainment with these gimmicks like the playoffs, lucky dog pass handed to the first driver a lap down after each caution flag period, and most recently, a new gimmick called stage races where the first half of the race is decided by 2 short segments where at the end, drivers in the top 10 get "Playoff points" for their finish in the stage and the person who wins the stage gets the most points for being the leader in the end of stage. and the final stage is the second half of the race.

another reason for the decline is NASCAR fans have their favorite drivers call it a career in recent years with Jeff Gordon retiring in 2015, Tony Stewart retiring in 2016, Carl Edwards abruptly retiring before the start of the 2017 season, then Dale Earnhardt Jr, retired at the end of last season after suffering a concussion in 2016 that almost ended it right then and there. and not to mention Greg Biffle left NASCAR after losing his ride in 2016, and Matt Kenseth may had retired after the 2017 season after losing his ride to a young driver at the end of 2017. and there's the possibility that Jimmie Johnson might be the next big name top driver from the 2000s era to hang it up in the next few years (or even sooner if he wins a record breaking 8th Cup Series Championship breaking the record, currently at 7 with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr and Jimmie himself).

plus NASCAR is trying it's best to recruit new younger fans with the current youth movement of drivers coming up from the ranks, but the younger generations of kids and adults have shorter attention spans and ain't gonna sit though a long 500 race or even the Coca-Cola 600 which is the sports longest race of the year.

plus the lesser known Trucks and Xfinity Series have struggled in attendance and ratings due to a combo of unestablished drivers and Cup Series regulars dominating and winning races as well as older NASCAR drivers who didn't do well in Cup continued their career in those series too.

to sum it up short: NASCAR is struggling due to gimmicks, retiring older drivers and tickets being overpriced to where the fans can't even afford it anymore.
 
nomadcowatbk said:
viewing for the large events is down in general, Oscars will probably have low(er) ratings
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I think this is the reason. Our leisure time and viewing attention is so fractured now. You could be retired, and spend time doing nothing but streaming content from the internet, and not have time to do anything else - and you don't need a TV to do it.

I've never been a huge sports fan in any case, so other than the occasional Golden State Warriors games, I rarely check out televised sports, these days. In my childhood with 7 channels, and even up into the 90s with a hundred channels, there was often nothing to watch that interested me, so I would default to sports. No need to do that any more. Now there is so much content to see that I don't even know what half of it is. Somebody just told me about Black Mirror, a 'Twilight-Zonish' anthology drama series I want to check out on Netflix. Apparently it's been on since 2011, and I never even knew it existed, until yesterday.

Another thing I almost never do is watch local news. I get it off the internet. It's kind of ironic when you think of it. People used to read their news (in newspapers) until TV became dominant, and now people are moving back to reading the news again - albeit on the internet - and that is killing newspapers, and I think, in time - it will kill local broadcast TV - or at least make it contract severely.
 
I grew up with TV's Golden Era and it seems to me the biggest change since then is TV no longer provides the same type of lighthearted entertainment it once did. We used to have all manner of comedy and variety shows and some of these seemed to attract the entire nation in one evening. Not until the late 50's did we begin to get very serious dramas and they got darker throughout the 60's with only a few old comedies breaking through. Now we have virtually nothing of that era. Nothing but guns, drugs, conspiracies, political statements and the news. The only genre that seems more plentiful nowadays are sports programming but even that is taken to extremes with 'exhibitions' replacing real sports.

It is strange but when I first began watching TV at age 10 in 1954 virtually everything was recorded aside from a few locally produced kid's shows. Now all I watch are live sports. I don't think broadcast TV will ever die because there will always be enough people wanting to watch sports but I do think it is declining into a niche service and in some cases, I'm talking to you Fox, it is essentially worthless.

It is funny but one of our local morning personalities favorite statements is "at Fox we have no standards". I think he is right but it isn't limited to Fox alone although they are IMHO the very best example.
 
You've got a point, 'Tuna. I used to roll my eyes at people who would complain about the news, "They never give you any GOOD news. The news is so depressing."

Up until the '16 election, I probably watched at least a half hour of news per day on TV, and listened to 3 hours per day of NPR. But since the election, I've cut back to just a few minutes of news reading per day on a couple of websites, and virtually no NPR or TV news. It's too difficult to watch the Sociopath in Chief reverse the few progressive things that Obama was able to do, and watch the country go down the dumper as it transforms slowly into a third world nation.

Sorry - I wasn't intending to get political and start an argument. But the point is, I just don't feel like spending a big chunk of my day being depressed and angry. The same is true about depressing TV shows. I'd rather read, or stream miscellaneous mindless crap from You Tube.
 
LKellerIII said:
I'd rather read, or stream miscellaneous mindless crap from You Tube.
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Granted, there is a ton of mindless crap on YouTube but there is also some very good stuff out there. For instance, I am monitoring a series called "The Great War" which is a weekly ten minute summary of that week's events as they occurred 100 years ago. It is very well done.
 
I fine cars going around in circles to be boring why I haven't ever gotten into Nascar other than the first lap or the final 10 or so laps.
 
landtuna said:
Granted, there is a ton of mindless crap on YouTube but there is also some very good stuff out there. For instance, I am monitoring a series called "The Great War" which is a weekly ten minute summary of that week's events as they occurred 100 years ago. It is very well done.
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YouTube is addictive for sports fans like me as well. As a baseball junkie, I look forward to following the Australian Baseball League (US minor leaguers and college players, Japanese prospects and native Aussies of all ages) all winter as well as the Mexican winter league (in Spanish). A cool YouTube channel to use as background sound while doing other things is "Classic Baseball on the Radio," a huge collection of radio play-by-play of notable and ordinary games from the '30s through the '80s. The whole library is available, with new games added every couple of weeks, and there's even a live stream of random games running 24/7. I had a Yankees-Indians game from September 1961 on earlier tonight, and now a Mets-Dodgers game from May 1963 is on.

In fact, classic sports is where YouTube really gets addictive. I've gone on classic baseball, football, boxing and hockey binges for weeks on end and still haven't come close to seeing everything that's out there. Sure, you still need TV to see the really big events (unless you want to go the illegal, offshore-streaming route) but sometimes I find what's online so entertaining that I have no real desire to seek out those big events.
 
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