re: 2025 NASCAR Season Thread - 2025-26 Offseason

NASCAR on Prime Video vs. three equivalent races last season:

-40% in A55+
-21% overall

Lost a lot of viewers. Losing 21% of your audience is bad. Factoring in supposedly Prime has a wider reach and yet down 21%.

Horrible decision. I have not watched any Cup since Prime. Enjoying my Sundays freed up.

And holy shite, soccer outdrew Nascar lolol

This past weekend, racing from Michigan averaged 1.77 million — marking in all probability the least-watched Cup Series race of the season

FOX aired the UEFA Nations League Final and outdrew NASCAR with 1.98 million.

Ratings aside, I do like their coverage.

It wasn’t because the audience was too old, it was because the audience was too rural. And Hee Haw was dirt cheap to produce, that’s one reason it lasted so long in syndication.

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OU Guy

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Weren't you told a couple of weeks ago to quit coming in here with the same rinse and repeat? You don't want to watch , fine. But don't come back here bitching and virtue signaling that you don't watch. Just stay away please

Sounds like the Logistics of getting everything across the border isn’t going the smoothest.

Hamlin is out this weekend following the birth of his child.

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Problem is, those numbers only go up because the other numbers went down. They are use magic numbers

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Do you know how silly you look right now?

Denial is a powerful thing

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Weren't you told a couple of weeks ago to quit coming in here with the same rinse and repeat? You don't want to watch , fine. But don't come back here bitching and virtue signaling that you don't watch. Just stay away please

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Didn't know you were board police or that you owned the thread.

The ratings are applicable to Nascar and mark a hard turn. I’m not talking about non Nascar stuff. But you don’t like to read anything that goes against your way of thinking is what I get out of your post.

As for ratings, its not about ability to use another tech. Its about another money grab and forcing viewers to pay. It may be free as a 30 day workaround but that goes away and then you have to pay in all future years.

Right now its funny to me that so many people don’t see whats happening. When cable came out it was innovative and a way to collate several channels for a fee. It was a way to have stations bundled.

Now all these streaming channels are each charging a fee and those fees are all going up. If you add up all the fees they become more expensive than cable but now you have so many different accounts. Eventually people will start cancelling their streaming due to costs. Its not about content of the racing, Prime is likely better than network in that regard from all accounts I’ve read.

Its about changing to all the streaming and being forced to pay separately. Eventually someone will try and bundle all these streamers for a flat fee which will be cheaper and easier to manage all the bills. Every account is higher risk of hacking or a streaming service ti sell your data.

For every 1 new Prime member Nascar has lost 5 fans. Now, we all know the younger crowd is not going to watch practices nor watch boring races. Right now its just experimental to these younger fans but they will not retain most of them over time. Yet Nascar has chased off its most loyal fans who can help get new fans, but not now.

Its great that some posters here love Prime, glad you like it. But the topic is very valid in how many viewers Nascar has thrown away for no good reason. This is not like NFL who has loyal fans of every age. NFL worked on Prime because football is the number ome sport and has JV, HS, College and Pro leagues that engage so many people. Even so they dod lose viewers their first year on Prime but got most (but not all) of them back. After 2 years they are still not where they were and thats the number 1 sport.

Nascar is nowhere close to what NFL is. And the numbers decreased each week. Its a novelty to the younger fans. They have no idea who Dale Sr was and all the stars over decades. Nascar threw away at least 25-30 years of future viewers (those 50-65 aged fans) who would watch well into their 80’s. And the younger crop will not have any vested interest other than this initial curiosity. Once they see how boring it can be (to them - they don’t understand strategies) they will leave.

I talk about it because I’ve watched it a long time. Its a huge topic to the 40+% of fans they lost.

One last note. NFL has gained viewers over the last 2 decades, other than the BLM fiasco and those all came back.

Nascar has been losing viewers the last 2 decades. And they decide to blame aging fans when the core problem is the product.
If they have a great product fans will watch. But they have done everything to ruin it and thats why fans have left in droves these past 2 decades. Now they are pushing out their last remaining loyal fans and have not fixed the product. Prime was just another straw from fans.

Thats why they will face serious problems in the future. They threw everything at this Prime deal including Dale Jr and Carl Edwards. They had the most popular driver Chase E. show Prime on his car as a primary sponsor for some races. And are not in the same position as NFL was when they went to Prime. All these tactics and it still failed.

I actually don't disagree with you across the board.

And the moves NASCAR has made, whether they were the right moves to accomplish their goals, are certainly subject to debate.

But this is my question: What do you do when those 50 to 55 fans die after 30-odd years, if you've not brought in a fresh group of younger fans? Do you just shut the thing down at that point?

Yes it's experimental for the younger folks. No they don't know about Dale Sr. or Fireball Roberts or Smokey Yunick. But if you don't bring them in, the sport dies. It's that simple.

IMO the biggest rub is that the fan group you described that is dominated by a specific demographic from a specific area of the country is so pissed about thinks something they had a tangible sense of ownership was taken away from them. When they never really had any legitimate tangible ownership in it, despite them feeling that way.

Plus everyone seems to act like Prime is just a TV channel. Honestly, in 2025, I don't know how anyone functions without Amazon Prime for reasons 180 degrees removed from TV viewing.

Did you know that Amazon Prime is my pharmacist? I feel bad for local drug stores trying to keep up, but I have to do what I've got to do for myself and Amazon Prime is never out of a medication and I always receive my stuff, without fail, within 48 hours of ordering it and sometimes local druggists don't touch a scrip for 48 hours.

It's only June and I've already spent $700 with Amazon Prime, taking advantage of the free shipping (which has already far exceeded the annual Prime fee) and what I need being in stock and available when I need it. And it's not just Chinese junk, it's everyday products.

I got my Father's Day gifts ... some Lee khakis and Wrangler jeans ... in the mail from Amazon yesterday. I got them there because I knew they would have the sizes I wear and the styles I wanted, and local stores never do.

There was also a pack of guitar picks in the shipment. I play the guitar. I love my local music store, they're good people. But they charge twice as much for strings and accessories than Amazon, and they don't stock the specific type of guitar picks I prefer .. specifically Herco Flex 50 Gold ... and aren't going to stock them. Amazon does.

So there's a lot more to Prime than TV that ought to keep people around after 30 days.

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But this is my question: What do you do when those 50 to 55 fans die after 30-odd years, if you've not brought in a fresh group of younger fans? Do you just shut the thing down at that point?

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Thats a great question.

Using 30 years as a baseline. You have probably the most loyal fans of any sport in that group. They will also tell it like it is when it sucks, which it has.

The most important problem is the product not the aging fans. If Nascar were to start changing rules and get more HP and less grip, that would bring back more driving skill.

As it is the sport is 90% engineering and 5% driver and 5% luck.

If they made changes to the car and created more driver skill required, then those fans in the group mentioned are going to start talking about how great the racing is. That group has a lot of friends based on their age. They can have lot of influence on younger gen folk, based on how they talk about it.

Over some time as the TV viewers grow it gets more media (social too) coverage by many people outside of Nascar. Because with more HP and less grip you are going to have so many more “gotta see this” moments. And young people like quick snapshots/videos of action.

As the racing improves you now start to gain traction with the younger crowd and have many more “can’t miss this” moments. The drivers will have more clashes with other drivers which drives viewers too (it would be real jot manufactured).

Improving the product would engage your most loyal fans and they would talk it up quite a bit and then that younger gen doesn’t want to miss those moments and engage the sport.

As it is you have a bad product and then threw away 5 of your most loyal fans for 1 new transitory fan. They speeding it to its demise way faster.

I wish someone could tell me how this younger gen is going to watch parades because they have no idea the history nor strategy of the sport. They will come and see and eventually leave because the product is bad. And Nascar won’t have there most loyal fans to help pick up the slack.

To recap: If I was a business thats struggling I would go to my most loyal customers and ask what I can do to better improve my product. Instead of saying “screw you for supporting us the past 30 years”. Thats the bottom line