I think specific forms of auto racing will go extinct, but I can’t see auto racing in general disappearing. Ethanol and other non-gas fuels are common for most series, and it wouldn’t be a big jump for accommodations to be made for other fuels or power sources. A lot of racing comes from and is supported at the grassroots level, with plenty of small tracks and racers, and youth/junior friendly kart classes. As long as cars are available for consumer purchase and use, there will be auto racing of some sort. It may go back to being mostly small/regional events, though.
I do think we’ll probably see the official end to IndyCar in my lifetime, with the Indy 500 race becoming a showcase race for a Euro open-wheel series or going back to being an Open. American open wheel series may die off completely.
NASCAR may well contract heavily, and shed several series, if the various series keep moving farther and farther away from actual production-level vehicles. I think stock car racing will continue, and don’t think NASCAR will lose its hold on it, but it will need to change in the future. I think your point about gasoline will affect this as well, causing some of the lesser series to be jettisoned and the main series to have fewer races, as long as they insist on using old combustion technology. Heck, they still use carburetors, but gotta give em credit… they finally ditched leaded gasoline in 2007!
If this isn’t a whoosh, perhaps you meant extinct in the USA? Cos seriously. Soccer has been around (professionally) since the 1880’s and I don’t see it going away any time in the next 50 years.
Netball. Completely unknown in the US, and a sad imitation of women’s basketball elsewhere.
And I’ll go along with bullfighting, dog racing, and harness racing, but not thoroughbred racing - there’s too much tradition and too much interest in it.
I think American football will end up a lot more rugby-like than it currently is.
What’s going to cause the shift is when the news media and the NFL quits putting the emphasis on reducing the injury from big, bell-ringing hit concussions, a-la Troy Aikman, et al, and the full extent of sub-concussion hits becomes apparent. For example, Mike Webster was a center- he didn’t have a lot of “big hits”, but he did have thousands and thousands of sub-concussive hits, and they’re what did the damage to him, and other linemen like Justin Strzelczyk.
That’s what’s going to kill American football as we know it- once parents realize that no position on the field is safe for their kids and that the damage is cumulative, they’ll either quit letting their kids play or demand rule changes to eliminate that kind of hit. (I suspect the latter will happen, myself.)
If you consider professional wrestling a sport, I’d chalk that one up for eventual extinction. The product today is lame compared to even 10 years ago, not to mention what it was 25 years ago. In 50 years I think whatever is left of pro wrestling fans will have migrated to MMA or some other form of entertainment. I say this and I honestly have no idea if WWE or TNA are making money or not.
As for a sport that’s gone extinct, remember Slamball? It was basically basketball played on a trampoline. They had games on TV about 5 years ago, but I haven’t seen it for a while. Its rise and fall were pretty quick.
Huh? “Most series”? Other than IndyCar, who isn’t using gasoline?
The amount of gasoline that is consumed in auto racing is trivial. On average, Americans use 366 million gallons of gas per day, compared to roughly 135,000 gallons per year for the Sprint Cup Series. Far more fuel is used by people going to and from the event, in fact some of them drive large motorhomes!
Indycar isn’t what it was, and you can thank the Frances’ meddling for that, maybe even more than Tony George. But IndyCar isn’t dead yet. As long as there are products and services that fit the demographic, there will be sponsorships. And as long as there is sponsorship, there will be media and promotion, and from there come the fans. I think IndyCar wil be in better shape in 10 years than they are now, thanks to the decline of the marketing juggernaut that is NASCAR, and the increased participation of multiple manufacturers in 2012 and beyond. They’ve finally got some smart leadership in Randy Bernard.
News flash: Sprint Cup is going to FI for 2012. See my comment above re: gasoline consumption.
As to production-based vehicles, I would like to see a touring car-type series here, but there’s not enough interest. I think that most people here who buy fast sedans buy them for image, not performance. If you want performance, you buy an M3 or a Porsche and then you can watch the American LeMans Series GT classes. Sprint Cup is, at the surface, all flash, jingoism and boogity-boogity, processed and packaged for its least-common-denominator audience. There’s more complexity beneath the surface, but the inertia of the mass appeal is hard to brake…
As long as IndyCar is composed primarily of foreign-born drivers and features no-contact, pass-rare racing, they will never overtake NASCAR. To beat NASCAR, you have to become NASCAR. Much of the current decline of NASCAR is due to two factors:
They got away from hard contact, pass-rich racing. Many of the changes this year were designed specifically to address this. That wasn’t a secret, NASCAR leadership addressed it directly. Ratings are up this year over last (with the exception of yesterday’s race, but the crazy NCAA tournament this year may have something to do with that).
They (France Family/ISC) thought they were recession-proof and acted late to reduce the cost of going to a weekend race. They learned otherwise and have started to address this as well (this one they’re moving slower on - IMHO this year’s numbers will still be down, but at a lower pace than last year, if that’s true, you might see some serious attempts to bring the cost down - after all some of their competitors (to ISC, not NASCAR) cut costs early in the recession and have maintained good attendance numbers). On the other hand, if the economy does start to recover, ISC’s numbers will likewise begin to recover.
No. The state sport of Maryland is ring jousting, and it’s a completely genuine competitive sport with age classes and serious tournaments and all. And it’s pretty impressive, actually, at top level–sort of like a precision rodeo event.
I wouldn’t expect (or honestly want) IndyCar to grow larger than NASCAR, it’s not in its nature. What I’m hoping for is an increase in mindshare and therefore sponsorship. There are plenty of potential sponsors whose demographics align well with IndyCar who are with NASCAR because they see them as the only game in town.
Seeing the attendance for the recent Bristol Sprint Cup races was quite a shock - the last 3 races there have failed to sell out, after a string of 55 consecutive sellouts. Of course, Randy Bernard would probably do unspeakable things to get a “disappointing” 125K in the seats for a non-IMS IndyCar event.
