I don’t get the very personal social media attacks on
others (and their mothers) for simply stating something as innocent as who
their favorite driver is? But since
NASCAR introduced the new Chase Format, lord help you if you have an opinion on
it.
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| The Sprint Cup Championship Trophy © Photo by Paul Wilkinson |
NASCAR like any sport is always trying
to come up with ways to make the sport more interesting to watch, less
complicated to follow and sustain a larger audience until the final race of
each season.
All this while making a profit.
The old “Points Format” that was used to crown a
Champion – well – it was simple, drivers and teams had to race/perform
consistently over an entire season and they earned points during each race.
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| Hamlin taking the track for final practice. © Photo by Paul Wilkinson |
So fans complained and NASCAR listened,
right? NO. NASCAR took a huge hit during the latest
recession. People were losing their
homes, jobs and filing bankruptcy just to make it through. People’s expendable incomes to spend on races
and infield camping took a HUGE hit.
Tracks were taking out entire sections of grandstands to reduce track
and maintenance costs. NASCAR was in
trouble, not because they kept changing the rules and pissing fans off, but because
their fans were in serious financial trouble.
No longer able to fill the grandstands, NASCAR
created the “NEW” Chase Format!
IMO, The new “Playoff” style format was
a brilliant NASCAR marketing strategy because of the attention it now brings
every week to the sport and how it keeps more fans watching until that very last
race of the season! Why?
Instead of having only ONE #DriverNation
interested in the final race, you now have FOUR #DriverNations hoping their
driver can pull out a championship and 39 other #DriverNations watching just to
see if the “Chasers” will crash each other out of spite.
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| Jeff Gordon and team will have to try again in 2015 © Photo by Patti Buchanan |
It’s always been about the money….always
will. Whether your favorite driver made it or not, there are more fans talking NASCAR and chase format than ever before. Good Job NASCAR!
Which format do you really think can sell
more tickets? Share your "Opinion" of the NASCAR Chase format here.
Season championships don't attract fans to a track. The action between the green and checkered flags do. I've been attending motor racing events for 60+ years now and NASCAR for over 50 years. The days of 100,000 fans at a track are over and are never coming back. It costs too much just to keep a roof over your head, food on the table, and a reliable car in the driveway to have extra money to travel several hundred miles to a race. Tracks are "right sizing" just to fill the seats. Talladega took something like 40,000, maybe more seats out.
ReplyDeleteI've been RVing to races since the mid 70s and I am here to tell you the campgrounds are not as nearly crowded as they once were. That is not going to get better, no matter what NASCAR or any racing series does.
NASCAR is hoping the TV ratings will go up so they can keep that mega bucks contract. So they need to play to the TV crowd, not the butts in the seats. NASCAR is headed the way of Formula 1 where they don't give a whit if a single person shows up as their revenue comes from the TV feed.
Although Auto Club Speedway is among those that have removed track seating, both grandstands and infield were Sold Out on Sunday in March, with an estimated attendance (including luxury suites) of approximately 100,000. I know that the infield campgrounds of over 1,800 sites is already sold out for 2015. I think with the economy coming back and staying stable we'll see larger crowds at the tracks and infields next year.
ReplyDeleteI would opine the price of gas has as much to do with increased attendance as anything else. I camp in my rollin' condo at all the races at IMS, TMS, and TSS every year and none of them has been sold out for a long time. There is no "infield camping" at IMS but the various lots around the track aren't sold out. At TSS there are several private campgrounds on Speedway Blvd that simply have gone out of business. I do agree there are more campers now than a few years ago, but it's nowhere near what it was 10 years ago.
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