Quote:
Originally Posted by Bored5000
I dunno. I am an old guy (45) whose parents started taking him to races at just a few months old, and I have never been more pessimistic about the long-term future of NASCAR/the Cup Series.
NASCAR has alienated so many long time fans in recent years, and those fans are not being replaced by younger fans. I think attendance/television ratings are going to be really ugly this year at a lot of places.
That's reasonable to be pessimistic, but the running theme that nascar is going to struggle drop off die has been recycled for over a decade now by older disgruntled fans that dug their heels in on the way things were and hated the changes that were made, they would love nothing more than to see the sport fall flat on it's face without their support, but it just hasn't happened. It's not new at all and the older threads echo a lot of the same sentiment.
I don't think it's likely that attendance is any worse than in previous years where it's already been bad at certain tracks, but the fact that this Junior-less Daytona International was a packed house leads me to believe it will be about the same. Some of these places absolutely need to get cut down to 1 race and 1 race only though, and explore some new tracks or bring back old ones.
There's so many factors in play for ratings, who's to say cord-cutting major networks isn't playing a role. Again, not surprised by this in a rebuilding time for them.