Posted on 03/04/2015 6:16:54 PM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK, March 4 (Reuters) - NASCAR calls it "right-sizing" but others see it as sign that something is terribly wrong with America's most popular motor sport as thousands of seats are being removed from tracks across the United States.
The sprawling Charlotte Motor Speedway, which once drew a crowd of 167,000, is removing 41,000 seats while tracks in Dover and Atlanta will chop capacity by at least 17,000.
"Right-sizing is the term," NASCAR's Chief Operating Officer Brent Dewar told Reuters after addressing the Sport Business Summit in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. "It is what you are seeing in all sports properties is the transformation of making the fan experience greater."
With TV ratings on a steady decline the sight of empty seats has served as a glaring reminder of the problems facing NASCAR as the series tries to recapture the glory days of the 1990s.
But Dewar maintains that downsizing is not so much a sign of trouble but a sign of the times reflecting the race experience fans demand and the way they consume sports.
"What you are seeing at a lot of the tracks is widening of the seats, additional suite access, venues that allow a better fan experience," said Dewar. "It is not just going to the race; it is more than the race.
"That is the story you are seeing at many of the tracks, football stadiums and baseball parks. The fan expectation today going to a sports venue is changing."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Smokey’s era was overtaken by technology.
It got to be too easy to go 200mph, which was the limit set by insurance and attorneys.
The change to the same body just painted different is what finally killed any interest I had in NASCAR.
Times past, if the factory did not have a good clean car, that make suffered for awhile. (As long as GM won)
Cars were actually modified factory cars. You had to be able to go down the parts department and buy an engine just like what they were running. (except if you were GM)
If someone came out with something revolutionary and started stomping the competition like a Superbird or a 427 SOHC, that got shut down because GM wasn’t winning.
Now we have a bunch of cars not based on anything real running parts that we can’t buy at the dealer.
For anyone watching this year, note how they rarely show the stands during the actual racing. It got funny last year.
The advertisers are in overdrive insulting the white male audience lately.
Tony George is one of the largest contributing factors to the current challenges that Indy cars face. When he split off from CART to form the IRL to create his own kingdom he doomed the series for at least a generation. I used to follow it, not much any more, he really screwed it up.
It looks like the private jets will be around at least a few more years...
The chase is one cause. The champion should be decided on a season’s hard work and success, not getting lucky at the end of the season. I stop watching when the chase starts, I know by then who my champion is.
Maybe I should have said they don’t let boys be boys anymore. Everything is so choreographed. I guess I am old school and miss the days of Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough.
Smokey built winning Hudsons, Pontiacs, Fords and Chevys. He called his shop “The Best Damn Garage in Town”.
re-read #30
makes sense to me SS
My kid’s college is on the grounds of a defunct cup speedway. (Beltsville). The berms are still there. For a $500 donation to his scholarship fund, you can sit on the grass and imagine Petty, fireball and DW racing there.
He called his shop “The Best Damn Garage in Town”.
My high school racing buddies used to go sit outside Smokie’s shop at night and listen to him run racing engines on the dyno.
I gave up on NASCAR for several reasons but the biggest is what they call racing I call wrecking.
They pander to a crowd that is there for the crashes. Demolition Derbies with a few laps of racing. if you watch their show from the start, you can see some darn good racing, but as checkered flag looms closer and closer, they start wrecking and crashing.
We had tickets to the first 18 Brickyard 400 races at IMS. We gave them up a few years ago. The races were boring. They don’t sell tickets for our section now.
Nascar was ruined by cookie cutter drivers in cookie cutter cars driving around cookie cutter tracks for the staged green-white-checker finish. It was once entertaining but now it comes off as canned.
He has a hard to find book by the same name. I recommend it highly.
1. Dropping all tobacco and most alcohol sponsors from racing events.
2. Car of tomorrow and no difference between makes of cars
3. Letting Toyota in.
4. Appealing to the young hip generation, getting rid of country music and replacing it with hard rock.
5. Not letting drivers race, no big rivalries, etc.
Just for the heck of it, I will play devils advocate.
For the record I went to my first Nascar race last fall so I have no historical reference to compare with. I wasn’t even a Nascar fan until a few years ago.
We bought a pit pass for $50. What other sport can you walk onto the court/field and take pictures. We gave Jeff Gordon a high five when drivers went to their meeting. We brought in a cooler of beer which saved a us a bunch from buying at the concession stands. We wrote a personal note on the wall in front of our favorite drivers pit box. No other major sport offers that kind of experience. Also, the new playoff format offered a lot of drama and heated tempers. It was a very interesting chase.
Again, I can’t comment on what life long fans have experienced in the past, however Nascar is still more patriotic, more reverant (what kind of benediction do you get at an NBA game) and more fan friendly than any major sport out there. My $.02
Very true. Over on this side of the state, however, we still have a fair number of redneck hillbillies* who still enjoy the smell of castor oil two-stroke premix (complete with clouds of blue smoke), or somewhat more environmentally friendly nitromethane or straight methanol.
*including yours truly
It’s my belief that Tony Hulman’s health was ruined by the disastrous 1973 race. But it’s true that Indy is not what it was in the 1970s or even 1980s. I’m sure you remember guys like Mel Kenyon, Steve Krisiloff, Lloyd Ruby and the Bettenhausens. Americans who raced for the love of the sport, and fans who went to the track for the love of the race.
I still go with my sons every year, and they are both huge fans. But the last several years, on Pole Day the track has been empty. I remember getting there “late” at 10 am for Pole Day in ‘77 and my brother and I had trouble finding a seat in the Tower Terrace.
I hate to say it but unless thare are some radical changes, auto racing in the United States has a cloudy future.
Teutonic hordes have been allowed to invade throughout the American countryside from the south, who know not our traditions. While at the same time citizens are more and more forced to pay tributes (payments under duress), to the swarms of vices on the Potomac.
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