INDIANAPOLIS — It was Monday morning and social media was abuzz with the wee-hours finish of the Daytona 500.
The Great American Race came to a fiery conclusion with yet another massive crash, wrecking hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. With the race delayed by rain for nearly six hours, it’s very likely that the television audience was substantially less than when the race began Sunday afternoon, perhaps another historic low.
There was a time when the Daytona 500 broadcast was a red-letter day on the calendar. Ken Squier, Chris Economaki and Ned Jarrett held our undivided attention when they came on the air and held command for the duration of the race.
But things have changed. The racing at Daytona Int’l Speedway is different today and that’s part of the problem. There are two phases of superspeedway racing now: A high-speed freight train with the cars tightly packed, lap after lap; and then the inevitable mayhem with multi-car crashes that take out large portions of the field, usually followed by a red-flag delay to clean up the mess.
After “the big one” came just 15 laps into this year’s race, a rain delay lasting five-hour, 40-minute and 29 seconds rbrought a restart late in the evening and the race finished after midnight on the East Coast. We tuned in for the early portion but didn’t realize the race was restarted, missing all of Sunday night’s action.
For what it’s worth, Mike Joy, Jeff Gordon and Clint Bowyer did a great job in the booth during the portion we watched.
It could be argued that the race should have been pushed to the next day, but perhaps NASCAR’s decision was influenced by a major winter storm that disrupted travel across the nation the day after the 500.
Either way, it was not a good day for the folks at Daytona.
The numbers don’t lie; the television audience for NASCAR — and the Daytona 500 — is nowhere near where it was just a few years ago. According to Sports Media Watch, the television rating for the 2006 Daytona 500 was 11.3 and it has steadily declined ever since. In 2020 it was 4.4, down more than 60 percent from 2006.
But here is some perspective: Every major sport is struggling today to maintain its audience. Ratings for the Super Bowl have declined for nine consecutive years, for example, and across the board numbers aren’t what they were just a few years ago. As noted in a recent analysis on Sports Media Watch, “The big events just do not hit the high notes anymore.”
A great many people at NASCAR — and throughout all major sports, really — are probably wracking their brains to figure out why the Daytona 500 has seen a large portion of its audience disappear and what can be done to to reverse the trend.
Maybe it is complicated; fans will readily bend your ear with opinions on the faults they find with NASCAR racing today.
But maybe it’s not as complicated as we make it.
The number of people watching network television — of any type — is steadily declining. Younger people are playing online games and watching YouTube videos, while middle-aged viewers are streaming programming from a variety of sources. That leaves fewer people watching traditional television.
Streaming technology has impacted the racing audience as well. Twenty years ago, NASCAR — and the Daytona 500 — were huge by every measure. Tickets sold, television audiences soared and sponsors had tremendous clout. But look at what has happened across the entertainment spectrum since that time: A vast number of racing events are now carried live on various television and streaming platforms.
When Squier and the CBS Sports crew came on the air in 1979, the idea of watching live coverage of an auto race was fresh and exciting. But today you can watch racing every night of the week through various streaming services.
That presents a daunting challenge for NASCAR and its broadcast partners: How do you create an aura among your audience that you cannot dare miss this broadcast?
Maybe NASCAR officials can figure out how they can reverse the trend and rebuild their audience. But it seems more likely that we’re witnessing a genuine “correction” and today’s audience is the natural size. It is what it is; and maybe the numbers just are what they are.