To Bring Back The Fans, Less Is More

By Jim Fitzgerald

I love my NASCAR racing. Let me say that up front. I have over 650 starts in my NASCAR career of fandom, and I love the contact, I love the speed, I love the finishes, and I love the controversy. It may be the most complete sport on or off of the television right now. The fact that there are at least 43 different stories rolling around the track every week should be, and is, enough to draw the average sports fan. As proof, NASCAR has touted for the past few years that it has one of the fastest growing fan bases in all of sports.

Now, in times of financial stress and obligation, the question may become not “how do you get the fan,” but more “how do you keep the fan.” We have all seen it for a while now, we hear about it during the broadcasts, and anyone who listens to NASCAR Radio on Sirius-XM knows the fans are all over it, and I am talking about the decline of the “sold out show” in NASCAR, not only in the grandstands, but in the race fan homes all across the country.

Nothing is recession proof, not even our glorious sport, but I can not say with one hundred percent certainty that the decline in attendance and viewer ship is only due to financial reasons. Honestly, for whatever reason, people may be busier today, now than ever.

A hectic lifestyle leaves less and less room for relaxation, and people may be hesitant to spend what little time they have in front of the television for four, sometimes five hours to watch a NASCAR race from start to finish.

On the heels of two Sprint Cup Series races that finished -- in under three hours from the time the initial green flag dropped, I found myself in the odd position of wanting more.

Very often, as the laps tick by and we reach the halfway point of a race, I am ready for it to be winding down with 20 laps to go. However, those past two weeks, at Watkins Glen and Bristol, when the checkered flag fell, it was perfect. Not perfect in that it was just enough, but perfect in the fact that I was at the point where I still wanted more.

That is how you get people to keep coming back. You keep them interested and give them only enough so that when it’s over, there is just a slight disappointment that there was not more of it.

It is very much like those episodic weekly suspense stories they use to show in the movie theaters decades ago. The show would open and this and that would happen, someone would get tied to the rail road tracks, and the hero would be on his or her way, but so was the train.

Hero! Train! Hero! Train! -- Hero-Train-HERO-TRAIN-HEROTRAIN -- HEROTRAINHEROTRAIN… Be sure to tune in next week to find out what happens…

Please…do not misunderstand me. I do think that the “endurance” races in NASCAR have their place.

The Daytona 500, the Coke 600, the Southern 500, the 500 mile races that used to be at Dover…all of these races are traditional and have a place in the continued history of the sport.

Aside from a very few other exceptions, I think that the race distances should be reconfigured to fall into a three hour time frame.

The Pocono 400 sounds nice. Or the Auto Club 350?

Maybe the Subway 400K at Phoenix.

Don’t like the numbers? How about the trend that removes the numbers from the race names, such as the Whatever at the Glen? (It will always be the Bud at the Glen for me…sorry.)

Or at Bristol, we had the Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol. We all knew it was 500 laps. We didn’t need to hear it every commercial break.

Anyway, the point I am (eventually) getting to, is that the races week-in and week-out do not need to be near five-hour epic sagas of cars playing follow the leader for two-thirds of the race.

A shorter race puts more emphasis on trying to get to the front now instead of later. This makes for more passing attempts. This makes the race more exciting, and the probability of me sitting in the seat for the duration of the telecast is higher.

Take note, NASCAR.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.