“In the short term, things look strong — especially relatively speaking to other sports content out there; they’re still getting multiple millions of people tuning in to the races. But to weather that multiyear decline in attendance and ratings, they’re probably going to need to think a little more creatively to maintain that in the long term.”
— Matt Balvanz, vice president of analytics, Navigate Research
“Everything is heading in the right direction — in context. I get the headlines and updates on almost every sporting event that gets broadcast, and the vast majority are seeing viewership being down. If you look at [Nielsen ratings] as an indicator of actual interest in the sport, I think we’ve always lagged behind what the true indicators are.”
— Mike Burch, senior vice president of national sales and marketing, Speedway Motorsports Inc.
“NASCAR is still a very compelling TV property to be involved in. The numbers certainly dipped in the first portion of the year … but we were encouraged by the big uptick in NBC’s debut at Daytona [July 2]. Certainly reason to continue to monitor and look at those numbers, but certainly encouraged by the uptick and more people consuming outside of the regular TV box.”
— Rick Penn, director of global sales and sports partnerships, Dow
