Rodster wrote:Reports are that Nascrap is looking to sell. The Frances were handed down a sustainable racing series that was growing and instead they chose and made bad decisions after another. Nascrap is going to have problems finding new owners. They are losing their title sponsor, team sponsorship is way down because the big players like Lowes etc are leaving the sport. Team operations and costs of running a Nascar team is way up. The superstars like Earnhardt Jr and Jeff Gordon are gone and the young guns don't create a lot of interest and attention.
Then you add how Nascrap gave the middle finger to their loyal southern fanbase by spreading out across the US and it just raises more questions if Nascar is actually in worse shape than Indycars. At least F1 has the offseason and in-season soap operas and is still followed by close to a billion fans around the world. Yup way back in 2003 when Nascrap went with Nextel and signing those mega TV contracts and getting the playoff series did I see serious red flags. I'm surprised it took 15 yrs to get to this point. Supposedly the Dover race scored a 1.7 TV rating down from 1.9 last year. All the numbers Nascrap is looking at spells trouble.
Not surprising. What's the old adage about the third generation of family ownership ruining the family business? That's certainly the case with NASCAR.
Brian France is a moron. He doesn't care about racing, doesn't go to many races. It's the worst-kept secret in racing that the France family's power in Daytona Beach has kept Brian's follies after "chemical dalliances" out of the papers and police blotter.
But NASCAR is going nowhere. It's still the most popular form of motorsport in the United States, by far. The bubble has burst, and the sport is returning to the norm. The problem is that the floor of the norm is much lower for all forms of motorsport in the U.S. than it was 15 years ago.
Racing is dying in America. Legions of 30 and youngers don't care about the car as anything but an Uber or Lyft medium. The fan base of nearly every major form of racing in America -- NASCAR, IndyCar, NHRA and IMSA -- is 50-year-old white men. That's unsustainable.
IndyCar is growing, but it's very incremental and from almost a subterranean nadir. Still, I'm happy to see my favorite form of North American motorsport on the up, especially since the company I work for owns it!
I love the sport. I'm incredibly grateful that I have made a living in it for 30 years. But I'm glad I'm almost 53 and not 33, as I don't think professional, big-league racing will sustain in 30 years half of the jobs in America it does now.
Kills me to write that. But the truth always stabs deepest.
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