NASCAR finished up its west coast swing with a thud on television. Facing stiff competition for the first time this year, the Fox telecast of the Auto Club 400 was down 13%
As we talked about last week, from here on through the end of the season NASCAR start facing stiff competition for viewers on television. This last weekend was the start of the NCAA tournament and the first place Golden State Warriors versus the second place San Antonio Spurs. The NCAA tournament ended up dropping between 10%-15% from 2015 while the NBA game on the other hand was the second most watched non Christmas Day regular season game in three years.
Having held steady for the last two years with overnight ratings of 4.0, this years trip to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana California posted a 3.5. The drop of 13% was the worst since the overnight rating from Atlanta showed a 27% drop in the second race of the 2016 season. The last two weeks in Las Vegas and Phoenix only posted slight 5% drops year over year.
What is troubling about this weeks drop is that the racing at Auto Club Speedway was markedly better than in recent years. NASCAR has hit a home run with the new downforce package on the track, but there is an argument to be made that some tracks reputation have been hurt so bad, that the recovery could take an extended period.
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This week the NCAA tournament won the sports ratings battle as expected, but the NBA tilt beat the race as well in overnights. Now the final for the Warriors Spurs game came out today and did actually show a slight rise instead of the normal loss, but NASCAR’s normal adjustment of .3-.4 of a ratings point should pull it ahead in the final numbers.
Next weekend is Easter and NASCAR’s first weekend off of 2016. They cars return to the track when all three series head to Martinsville Speedway for some short track action. It is also the return of NASCAR Sprint Cup coverage to FS1. The moving the race from Fox to FS1 resulted in a massive 34% drop in viewership. The massive drop culminated with press releases saying all positives, but you cannot ignore that one in three people who watched the race the year before did not tune in.
Saturday Afternoon’s Xfinity race from Fontana posted a surprising gain in viewership, with 1.4 million viewers tuning in to see Austin Dillion pass Kyle Busch on the last lap to win. It is nice being able to say that a NASCAR rating was up. In two weeks the Xfinity series along with the Camping World Truck series will be on FS1 beating and banging in the first of three out of four weeks on short tracks.
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With the tempers flared up after California we should see some door banging action at Martinsville in two weeks. If Fox Sports gamble of putting NASCAR Sprint Cup races on the Fox Sports 1 network to build awareness comes through, we should see a gain in ratings for the Sprint Cup race. If we see another fall, with as good as the races have been and the effort put into FS1, the strategy could be deemed a failure early. Lets hope for the best, because I know I never miss a short track race!