North American stock car-racing series Nascar remains in a strong position despite a host of events suffering a fall in television ratings, according to chairman Brian France.
The SportingNews website said the event held in Phoenix on November 12 was the 11th straight Sprint Cup race to hit a multi-year low in ratings and viewership, and the 13th of the past 14 races.
It added that heading into the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway yesterday (Sunday), 21 races have hit multi-year lows in either ratings or viewership. However, SportingNews noted that Nascar’s increased focus on social media, including new platform partnerships, has resulted in 236 million engagements – an 89-per-cent increase year-on-year – and 3.8 billion impressions.
Falling ratings is a subject that is concerning sports leagues across the world at present. France noted the trend, but pointed to Nascar’s growing digital performance as evidence of a shift in consumption habits.
“We are still very pleased with our position in sports,” France said at a press conference ahead of Sunday’s season-ending race. “The audience isn’t going away at all. Instead it’s sliding to different places and consuming in different ways.
“I could tell you of some other leagues that have 30 per cent drop-offs. They didn’t lose (that) from one moment to the next. That audience is just sliding and consuming in different ways. Our digital consumption is off the charts.”
Nascar ends its 2016 season without a title sponsor in place for its showpiece series from 2017. In December 2014, telecommunications company Sprint said it would end its long-standing title sponsorship of Nascar’s top series when it’s current contract expires after the 2016 season.
Sprint, which assumed the sponsorship of the Sprint Cup Series when it bought out Nextel in 2005, announced it would not engage Nascar in talks to renew the contract. An initial 10-year deal that ran from 2004-2013 was believed to be worth $750m (€679.3m), with a three-year extension signed in December 2011 to cover the 2014 through 2016 period raising the annual value of the deal to around $80m.
Commenting on the latest news on talks over a new partner, France added: “It’s taken a little longer than I thought, but it’s also a big and important agreement. It’s not just dollars and cents, but needs to be a fit for us. We’re in a good spot with that, I believe, but we’ll have to see how it finally plays out. It’s a complicated agreement.”