TV ratings are down for the Cup Series, but NASCAR points to other factors that suggest growth

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) — While acknowledging sagging television ratings for the Cup Series, NASCAR is trying to “create as many avenues as possible” to attract new fans.

NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell, speaking two days before the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway , said the sanctioning body is turning to YouTube and social media influencers in hopes of growing the series beyond its southern roots and moving further into international markets.

“If you’re in New York or you’re in Seattle, and you don’t have a race, what is that entry point?,” O’Donnell said Friday. “It may be a YouTube clip that you see that you say, ‘Hey, this is pretty cool. What is this? I’m going to tune into that race. OK, I found it. I want to then go to a race.’

“So there’s a lot of avenues that we’ve got to focus on, all kinds of things that we can look at to grow. … We know we’re building off a strong foundation, but we’ve got to grow those.”

O’Donnell pointed to admission being up 5% across all races and attendance for kids 12 and up being up 12%. He also noted that NASCAR is coming off “record attendance” at European series events.

He blamed recent TV ratings on head-to-head matchups with college football and the NFL.

NBC viewership for last week’s Cup race at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia was down 15% from last year. The event averaged just under 2 million viewers, making it the least-watched, non-delayed Cup race on broadcast television. And NASCAR has seen an overall postseason decline in ratings.

“You’ve got to look at your social media engagement. You got to look at, ‘Are you growing on YouTube?’ Are sponsors coming into the sport? Are you top of mind as people are talking about it?" O'Donnell said. "All those things are up.

“Attendance? If I came in here and said, ‘Our attendance is matching our ratings in the tail end of the season,’ that would be something we would want to focus on. Our attendance is up. When we look at 2027, where we’re going, those numbers are up. So we’ve got to look at it all in totality. It’s all important.”

O’Donnell applauded the addition of Dodge as a fourth manufacturer and suggested a partnership with Tom Cruise and his “Days of Thunder” sequel could help.

“The goal at NASCAR is ultimately to create as many avenues as possible to bring fans into the sport,” he said. “That’ll hopefully lead to someone saying, ‘Hey, I want to get to a race.’ What do we hope that happens from there? They embrace a driver.

“True success is that race fan has embraced the driver and develops so much passion that they have absolute disdain for three or four other drivers out there on the track. That’s when we know we’re successful.”

The return to the Chase for the championship this season, which rewarded consistency and dumped elimination events during the 10-race playoff, resulted in Kyle Larson nearly clinching the title a week before the finale.

But O’Donnell suggested it was more of a fluke than a flaw to the setup.

“Kyle Larson has gone on an historic run and deserves to be talked about,” he said. “If we had that one-race deal, we would have had four drivers in here and it would have been different. …

“At least in my discussions with the garage area and the industry, people feel like directionally it has worked. But we want to talk to the fans as well and see what feedback we get.”

Larson has won three of the nine postseason races and finished in the top 10 in eight of them.

The Next Gen car in the Cup Series gets ripped regularly — by fans and drivers alike — for the racing product it produces. But O’Donnell doesn’t expect any wholesale changes to the car because it creates “a sustainable model for the industry.”

“A (new) car comes with all kinds of costs and all kinds of different things,” he said. “So I’m confident in our guys and the industry and the OEMs to tweak what we have where necessary but also be pretty confident in our drivers going out there and having the ability to go win races and put on some pretty darn good competition.”

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