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Some concerned over NASCAR start times

Executives around NASCAR believe the sport can see a meaningful gain in TV ratings from the decision to push back start times next season, but at least two track presidents say they’ve heard from fans who are not in favor of the move.

NASCAR got ahead of its 2017 Sprint Cup schedule when it announced late last month its start times for next season — easily the earliest announcement of its schedule in history. Next season, the start times for 14 of 36 races will be pushed backed by as much as two hours in an effort to draw more television viewers.

Two races will be 30 minutes later; one will be 45 minutes later; six will be one hour later; three will be 90 minutes later; and two will be two hours later.

The start time for New Hampshire’s July race is among those that will be pushed back in 2017.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
NASCAR traditionally has started a significant amount of its races at 1 p.m. ET and did so 10 times in 2016. But it will do so just twice in 2017.

The move, made in conjunction with industry stakeholders, is designed to get NASCAR programming on later in the afternoon when more people are watching TV. Still, while executives have unanimously voiced hope that the change will draw more viewers, some on the track side are concerned the later start times could affect attendance and discourage fans who face a long drive home.

“I do [an annual race weekend event called] ‘Coffee and Pop-Tarts with the Track Prez’ on Saturday mornings, and on Saturday nights I do free beers by the campsite in the infield with my team — and at both events [this year], I got fried,” said Michael Printup, president of Watkins Glen International, who said “day trippers,” who drive round trip on race days, make up close to a quarter of the track’s typical attendance. “It was the high topic, of, ‘It’s going to be hard to make a 3:30 start next year.’ They read 3 [p.m.], but they know there’s 20 to 25 minutes of pre-race — so it was very concerning. When you’re in a public situation, when the fans are talking to you like that, it made me concerned.”

Printup, whose track sold out its roughly 35,000-seat grandstand for a second straight season this year, said the number of people who talked to him about it was in the hundreds.

Pocono Raceway, one of three independent tracks that still host Sprint Cup races, will see one of its races move back 90 minutes from 1:30 to 3 p.m. and the other by two hours from 1 to 3 p.m. Track president and CEO Brandon Igdalsky said he also has heard about the move from fans.

“The majority of my fans are not in favor it,” Igdalsky said. “I’d say it’s probably a 60/40 split of the fans I’ve talked to so far.”

However, some track executives are more sold on the deal. Marcus Smith, president and CEO of Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns eight racetracks, said SMI wouldn’t have agreed to the move if it thought it would hurt the company. In the public company’s second-quarter report released last month, SMI’s admissions revenue was down 11 percent for the first six months of the fiscal year, from $50.7 million in the first half of 2015 to $45.1 million during the same period in 2016. For its part, rival track operator International Speedway Corp. was down 2.3 percent in admissions revenue in the first half of the 2016 fiscal year.

Smith is optimistic the later start times will allow fans more time to get to the track and take in pre-race activities like the midway activation zone or concerts.

“Every change that we made were changes that we felt were manageable and in a lot of cases improve the day for our fans,” Smith said.

Given the delicate situation between serving the needs of fans in attendance and those at home, Steve Herbst, NASCAR’s senior vice president of broadcasting and production, said the sanctioning body worked hard to strike a balance.

“That’s why we tried to balance it as much as we could and don’t go beyond two hours in any one place and doing selective races — [we] understand that people travel, camp out, stay over,” Herbst said.

Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ senior vice president of programming and research, predicted the later start times could lead to a mid-single-digit increase for each race that is starting later.

“Having a chance to move some of these races a little bit later in the day probably gives us more opportunity to benefit from increased TV usage as the afternoons go on,” Mulvihill said. “It’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but it’s reality.”

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