Several of my friends are NASCAR fans and they’ve told me that their little car racing sport is now the second most popular spectator sport in the USA. I ask them for cites and they cannot provide me with any, and I’ve done a quick Google search and only found Nascar officials quoting each other about their sports popularity. Does anyone have any solid information about this topic, and any verifiable methodology? Does one measure by the number of people attending the event, or by the gate receipts, or by the television revenue, or the mechancise revenue, Gallup poll, or what?
To digress from my own post and FWIW (not much) suspect that American spectator sports popularity rank amoung sports fans is this:
NFL football
MLB baseball
NCAA football
NCAA basketball
NBA basketball
NASCAR
PGA golf
Watching paint dry
Tennis
NHL hockey, when they play it.
Among all Americans, not just sports fans, figure skating ranks up behind baseball, I think.
But back to the original question: How popular is NASCAR anyway, and how does one objectively measure that?
By my count, NASCAR in 2004 had 37 races. It is obviously quite impossible for a sporting league with only 37 events to draw anywhere near as many fans as a league that holds hundreds and hundreds of events; the NFL holds more games than that in the month of October, and Major League Baseball holds more games than that in a WEEK. Even if every event drew 200,000 fans, that’s still just 7.4 million paying fans, a fraction of the number that go to see most of the other sports you mentioned.
I, too, have had difficulty finding actual attendance numbers for NASCAR events.
It may be that automobile racing is the second most popular spectator sport, but the vast majority of attendance at motor sport events are at events other than NASCAR.
Like you said, it all varies by how you quantify it… I’m sure attendence of NCAA football games dwarfs attendence to NFL games. However, more people watch the super bowl than the NCAA championship.
Football is the most popular professional sport in America but the most spectators go to baseball games.
Football only draws about 17m fans a year while baseball draws about 72m. It’s a simple function of there being 162 baseball games on every team’s schedule and there being 30 MLB teams.
Bristol Motor Speedway has a capacity of ~160,000, and both Nextel Cup events have been sellouts for the past 10 years. Daytona International Speedway attendance for the Daytona 500 weekend was estimated at more than 250,000 according to the last estimate I heard, including infield occupancy.
As for ratings, the Budweiser Shootout had a 5.3/10, which equates to about 9.5 million viewers. The next highest rated sports programming for the week was the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with a 4.0/9. The NBA and NCAA basketball trailed by quite a bit.
The 500 itself drew a 10.9/23, or about 18 million viewers. By comparison, Monday Night Football averaged an 11 last season.
According to a report from Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal last season, the average rating for all Nextel Cup events was a 5.0.
Ooh, just meant to add: the Budweiser Shootout also outdrew the NFL Pro Bowl this year, although the Pro Bowl was on ESPN. The Pro Bowl had a 5.1 cable rating, which is equivalent to a 4.2 broadcast, apparently.
Well, it is true. NASCAR pulls in the second highest seasonal ratings, next to the NFL. But their top events don’t do nearly as well against the top events of, say, baseball. The Daytona 500 last week was the highest rated NASCAR event ever held and it pulled a 10/23, which is still not as good as the worst rated World Series ever (2002) which pulled a 11/23, and not nearly as good as the 13-16 the World Series usually pulls.
I think much like the NFL, it’s a scarcity thing. There are a lot fewer NASCAR competitions than MLB games so they get much more attention and have more of that “event” feel.
Anyway, to sum up, while NASCAR may be the second most watched sport, I think it’s a stretch to extrapolate from that info that it’s the second most popular sport.
It’s interesting to note that at least ratings-wise, other motorsports may as well not exist. The Indy 500 for example drew about a 5.1 rating if I remember right. Formula 1 evidently draws more flys than viewers. If I remember correctly even the event in Indianapolis did about as well as a regular season hockey game. This country isn’t really interested in motor sports. I personally enjoy motorsports but am ambivalent about NASCAR. I like to watch the WRC, but have had a tough time even finding it here.
To which I say, so what? NASCAR has one big nationally televised event each weekend during the summer while baseball has 15 locally televised events every day during the summer, plus two nationally broadcast games each week. To say that Nascar is more popular than baseball based on national TV ratings just isn’t fair because it ignores context. More people in Cleveland watch the Indians game than the car race, but that doesn’t get reflected on the national ratings and no one outside of Ohio watches the Indians at all. People in NY watch the Yanks or Mets, people in Missouri watch the Cards or Royals.
i think NASCAR is well on it’s way to becoming the #4 Professional Sport. Since NHL has all but buried themselves to a slow and unnoticed death… And NASCAR will likely surpass the Thug Basketball Association if it hasn’t already.
NASCAR has an appeal to it in that it’s (so far) unblemished. No thug antics. Easy to follow. Spectacular crashes. And the occasional exciting finish. Plus, like the NFL, really cool commercials! I’m sure, as it’s popularity rises, it’ll find it’s own ways to blemish itself, but for now, it’s still a ‘clean’ sport. Plus, chicks dig it. Wut more reason duz a guy need?
Well, not quite. There is the occasional post-race fistfight between a guy who got punted into the wall and the guy who did it. One team was fined at Daytona for mechanical cheating (coming to the tech inspection with an illegal intake manifold.) NASCAR keeps a close rein on this sort of thing, though. Last year, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. was levied a big fine, and actually had championship points taken away, for cussing in his Victory Circle interview on live TV.
If you include all stock car racing, from NASCAR Nextel Cup all the way down to the local short tracks spread throughtout the country, it is the most popular spectator sport in the US. Toss in other forms of motorsports such as drag racing, motorcycle racing, even the monster trucks at your local sports arena, and the gap becomes much larger. When I drove at my local short track in the mid 80’s, it was not unusual for Spanaway Speedway to outdraw the Seattle Mariners on a typical Saturday night. Of course the M’s sucked then too.
What would NASCAR do on a Monday night with no competition from the other networks that MNF has? The Daytona 500 is on a Sunday afternoon, an obvious disadvantage when it come to drawing viewers. Not a fair comparison.
The Bud Shootout was televised on FX, which has about half the market of ESPN. What would the number have been with more coverage?
RIP Spanaway Speedway, now being bulldozed for another housing development.
So compare it to the Super Bowl, which is on Sundays.
The Daytona 500 is THE premier NASCAR event. Comparing it to ordinary regular season football games is silly; the obvious comparison would be the Super Bowl. Or the World Series, or whatever big sporting event you want to name. An ordinary Monday Night Football game would more properly be compared to a less popular NASCAR event, the Crest White Strips 400 or some such thing.
[QUOTE=racer72]
If you include all stock car racing, from NASCAR Nextel Cup all the way down to the local short tracks spread throughtout the country, it is the most popular spectator sport in the US. Toss in other forms of motorsports such as drag racing, motorcycle racing, even the monster trucks at your local sports arena, and the gap becomes much larger. When I drove at my local short track in the mid 80’s, it was not unusual for Spanaway Speedway to outdraw the Seattle Mariners on a typical Saturday night. Of course the M’s sucked then too.
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OK, but consider this. A person who likes both races and baseball has to go to the races on Saturday night because that’s the only night they run. That person can still go to a Mariners’ game - or a Tacoma minor league game - on the other 6 days of whe week. When you claim that racing is the most popular spectator sport in America, are you factoring in the millions who attend minor league baseball games too? I’m told that the minor league St. Paul Saints occasionally outdraw the big league Minnesota Twins when they both play on the same night.
Saturday nights use to be the best attended games the M’s would have all week. And Spanaway ran 3 nights a week, Wednesday’s, Friday’s, and Saturday’s.
Yes I am. There are over 600 race tracks of 1 mile or less that qualify as short tracks. Take a look at this site and you will find there are many more racetracks than minor league baseball teams. And many tracks, such as Spanaway, run more than once a week. And baseball teams are only home for half their games, a race track can count on the same group of participants for each show. A typical minor league baseball team will have 60 to 72 home games a year, about the same number of race dates a short track will host. Auto racing wins by shear numbers. I live within a stone’s throw of Pacific Raceways, a dragstrip/road course located outside of Kent, Washington. It is always busy and will draw over 200,000 folks the 3 days the NHRA makes it’s annual stop at the track.
Racer72, is there any published objective data to substantiate your assertions that more people attended car races than baseball games? On a related point, is there any published objective data to show what the gate receipts were? ie, I’m guessing the cost of a Mariners’ game is much higher than the price of a ticket to Pacific Raceways during the NHRA nationals, but I don’t know. I do know the Mariners ticket prices were on their website, whereas Pacific Raceways’ site just says “contact us about tickets”.
My 2004 “Baseball America” directory (sorry, I don’t have the 2005 edition yet which will have more current data) says the following with regard to attendence at professional baseball games in Washington state in 2003:
Seattle - 3,268,504
Tacoma -327,927
Everett - 110,043
Spokane - 170,640
Yakima - 60,037
Tri-City (Pasco WA) - 58,976
Is there any published, objective data concerning attendence at the car racetracks in Washington state, or in any state for that matter? You will forgive me, but just your say so doesn’t convince me any. I don’t think the Mariners are sweating the competition from Pacific Raceways either just yet.
The Pacific Raceways’ site is interesting in that it lists all differnent types of races - stock cars, drag racers, motocross. My original post concerned the popularity of Nascar, which I took to mean Jeff Gordon, Dale Ernheart Jr., Dick Trickle, etc. I didn’t realize they were also counting every gear head who races for a very expensive hobby at every two-bit dirt track in the country too.
I’m sure, as it’s popularity rises, it’ll find it’s own ways to blemish itself, but for now, it’s still a ‘clean’ sport. Plus, chicks dig it. Wut more reason duz a guy need? 