If you're attending a race in person, it's quite the spectacle. The cars are flashier under the lights. They look faster, too. And it's a lot harder for rain to ruin your weekend. Because chances are you weren't planning to drive home Saturday night, so you have Sunday to act as a rainout buffer. Plus there are fewer people walking around with no shirt and a blazing red, sunburned beer gut. That sight always makes me shiver.
Even if you have to watch from home, night races have a lot of advantages. It just feels like you get most of your weekend back. You still have time to assemble a new swing set on Saturday. And on Sunday, you're much more willing to go visit those relatives who always watch the Yankees, the Giants, or Tiger Woods. Plus you can take that Sunday afternoon nap and not miss something Robby Gordon might do.
However, according to Nielsen Media Research, Saturday night races usually have lower ratings. Why? And more importantly, is that really such a bad thing?
I think part of the reason for the lower TV turnout is because a lot of the people who watch NASCAR are also involved in some form of auto racing at the local level. It's no secret that this segment of the sport relies heavily on Friday and Saturday night attendance for its survival. So when you move a Nextel Cup race to Saturday night you're interfering with a lot of folks who have a tradition of getting out to their local tracks over the summer weekends.
In fact, there is evidence to show that this conflict actually hurts local short tracks across the country even more than NASCAR would like to admit. Marty Smith has written articles on the subject from time to time at the nascar.com website where the impact of night racing has been debated.
But that certainly doesn't mean you can say NASCAR is all bad for the small tracks. In contrast to the doom and gloom, have a look at the jayski.com website.
You can see there's still a lot of grass roots support coming from NASCAR's biggest personalities. And this can't happen without the continued success of Nextel Cup.
Ever since the early 80's, TV ratings have been very important to NASCAR. So it would make sense during the spring and summer to limit the night races. It takes advantage of the obvious improvement in viewership when they run on Sunday, and it also gives the small track promoters a break and helps put people in their grandstands.
But once September rolls around, everything changes.
Two words: little brown oval-shaped ball.
If NASCAR wants the Chase to be successful, they can't run the ball up the middle against the NFL. Saturday nights make for a tempting way out of that struggle, and may be the answer during the post-season.
I don't think NASCAR is going all Saturday night racing which will definitely hurt the local tracks. I think their stand is add a couple night races to the schedule rather than sunday.
Although the references you have added links to are credible, there are other factors that reduce the attendance and viewing on TV. The economy is not as strong as our political appointees would like you to believe and not every body has access to the cable or satelite channels.
The other factor is the quality of the broad casting by ESPN, TNT,or the Major networks. I think Fox does a better job at reporting on the races than any of the other networks and they don't have the races at present. Many have went to alternate viewing or listening to the races which are not tabulated.
The announcers at SIRIS and the NASCAR AM radio network really put on a great lap by lap play of the race that makes you feel like you are at the track.
Good job Qtr. You and Kval both hit on the TV coverage. Ratings are an important factor and being able to find a suitable time slot that fits West coast/Central/ and East coast is a huge key to making night races work for everyone.
Its very easy for nascar and the local tracks to work togather for the weekend. The local tracks give away some tickits to the race and move their saturday night to noon Sunday. Theres no reason the local track cant switch 1 or in some cases 2 race nights to the next day, They might even get a few more fans to come and watch the race in the sun.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I gotta tell you, before I started looking into the ratings, based on all the great things everyone here at the office had to say about night races, I figured there would be little spikes in the charts on each of those Saturdays. So I was kind of surprised and disappointed to see that it doesn't give NASCAR a TV boost at all. There's lots of reasons why, I guess. Local racing was just one part of the reason that I wanted to focus in on. It's too bad the Richmond race got rained out til Sunday, because that one would've been interesting to see how much of a difference the move from FX to Fox would've made, but the higher rating they got this year probably had to do with being on Fox and on Sunday together.
QMTR - I like the TV viewership angle - I thought there'd be a spike too. But there is alot going on Saturday - football, basketball, weddings, work for some, shopping, fishing, boating etc. Those all take eyeballs away from the track and the TV.
NASCAR cannot make the Chase successful because the concept behind it is flawed. As for night racing, it is horribly overrated. Sunday afternoons were made for big league sports, and racing thrived most on Sunday afternoons. Moving Chase races to Saturday nights makes no sense because nothing positive ever comes of it.
Forensic2, the local tracks often can't afford to do that, plus why is the onus supposed to be on them? The onus is supposed to be on the big series, not the local tracks. NASCAR belongs on Sunday afternoons only.
During the chase, I think night races are an advantage for them. Especially this year, because not only do they leave the NFL viewers alone, but also for the two night races in the chase this year they've gotten ABC to replace their "Saturday Night Football" games in favor of the races. So that also prevents some of the college football tv competition. I bet that gets them at little boost. We'll see.
Nice emphasis on the positive points of night time racing for NASCAR. I agree with you on the feeling that your weekend is longer, because now you have Sunday to do other things. I hadn't considered the impact of football on Sundays during the Chase season. But that's because I don't follow it all. Good Luck in the contest.
Joe Akulis was raised and still lives in New York's Southern Tier region. As a kid, he spent many weekends in the stands at the local quarter mile track scarfing down fried dough covered with dirt and sugar, and squinting through the dust cloud to cheer on his uncle. Later in high school, he discovered that he too shared a certain knack for 1/4 mile distances as he set a high school record running the 400 meter hurdles. At 35 years of age, he now enjoys the family life, can still run a pretty quick 400 meter dash, and catches most of the Cup races on tv each weekend. He can often be spotted walking into the office wearing his five year old Jeff Gordon hat which is proudly littered with a little bit of dirt from more northeast tracks than you can shake a stick at.
