So why does NASCAR stay with mid-and-late afternoon starts? “I‘d say it‘s a balancing act, like almost everything that we do here, NASCAR Senior Vice President, Broadcasting & Innovation Brian Herbst told Sports Media Watch on Wednesday. Beyond having to balance the concerns of the tracks, the teams, the drivers, the sponsors and the media partners, NASCAR must also balance two separate groups of fans: those in attendance and those watching on television.
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The impact of an earlier start on that television audience is not trivial. For every hour a race is moved back, NASCAR estimates a five percent viewership hit. “If you look at it purely from a data perspective, you‘re averaging 3 million viewers per event. That 10 percent from 3:00 pm to 1:00 pm is about 300,000 viewers, just broadly speaking,” per Herbst. A recent example is the annual Cup Series race from Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which gained about 500,000 viewers after moving from a 1 PM ET start in 2021 to a 2:30 PM start in 2022. “If the overarching goal is to drive fan interest in the sport and make sure there‘s as many people that are paying attention to your sport as possible, trying to get those 300,000 extra viewers on a typical Sunday is important.”
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Sometimes, NASCAR‘s media partners will prefer an earlier start to accommodate their other properties; for instance, a 2 PM ET start for Talladega in October to ensure that NBC is able to air its nightly newscast at 6:00. For the most part, however, the trend is toward later start times due to the impact on viewership. Do not expect that to change with the additions of TNT and Amazon Prime next year. The networks, Herbst said, “like to see numbers — and so would we, frankly, on the league side — where we‘re drawing in the biggest audience possible.”
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Ultimately, even if a race starts early enough to more easily accommodate a weather delay, a rain-impacted race is still a rain-impacted race. In moving up its start times, NASCAR would be guaranteeing itself a smaller audience each week in order to merely lessen — not prevent — the negative impact of a rain-delay. The cost/benefit analysis simply does not work in favor of earlier starts, especially as rain-impacted races are still relatively rare.
Read the whole thing at Sports Media Watch, you will be much better informed
