Following an all-out brawl on pit road following last week's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, ESPN saw a double-digit increase in the overnight rating for yesterday's Quicken Loans 500 at Phoenix Int'l Raceway. ESPN drew a 2.8 overnight for the telecast from 3:00-6:45pm ET, up 12% from the 2.5 overnight for the Chase race at Texas Motor Speedway last Sunday, and up 21% from the same PIR race in '13. The 2.8 overnight also is the best figure for the penultimate Chase race in at least the last five years (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor). In Charlotte, Jim Utter notes NASCAR has gotten "plenty of attention" for incidents that have taken place "after the race or away from the track this season, but it should be applauded" for the kind of race fans saw yesterday. There was an "abundance of intensity and intrigue as fans waited to see who won the race and who the four drivers would be that will compete for the championship" at Sunday's Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. That can "only be a good thing for fans" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 11/10).
MEDIA MONITOR: Last night’s 11:00pm ET edition of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” devoted the first seven minutes of the broadcast to highlights from three NFL game reports before airing coverage of the Sprint Cup race. That included race analysis from ESPN’s Ricky Craven. The show later aired another report from ESPN’s Marty Smith about 30 minutes into their broadcast. Last night’s 11:00pm ET edition of FS1’s “Fox Sports Live” followed a similar tract, leading with four NFL game reports and then analysis on yesterday’s NFL action. NASCAR coverage came about 12 minutes into their telecast. FS1 also aired another race report about 40 minutes into the telecast, which featured analysis from Kenny Wallace and Jeff Hammond (THE DAILY).
FADE TO BLACK? SI.com's Richard Deitsch wrote, "We all know what happened to NHL coverage on ESPN when the league moved to another rights-holder," so NASCAR fans should "clip and save this question" from ESPN VP/Motorsports Production Rich Feinberg. During a conference call last week, Feinberg said, "I can assure those asking the question and all fans out there that we're going to continue to cover NASCAR across all our news and information platforms in a very significant way. We don't have rights agreements with many different sports out there, but 'SportsCenter' has an obligation to their fans to cover all sports." He added, "Our plans are to fulfill the interests of NASCAR fans who watch all our news and information programming, and I can tell you I personally have already been involved in our planning for coverage for the Daytona 500 in 2015 next year. I don't think you'll see much of a change" (SI.com, 11/9).
