There's an adage that says "if you're not moving forward, you're moving backward." It seems that isn't true anymore when it comes to sports television, where just staying even in ratings is cause to celebrate.
Fox Sports issued a press release last week touting the success of its NASCAR coverage, which averaged a 5.8 household rating this year, the same as in 2002.
Those figures do not include the Daytona 500, which alternates between Fox and NBC and registered a 9.8 rating on Fox this year, down from NBC's 10.9 in 2002.
The case for extolling the flat ratings for the rest of the schedule was easy to make: It included three races during the height of the war in Iraq, when some sports programming suffered audience losses. Fox also compared NASCAR to the other top sports properties — the NCAA men's basketball tournament dropped 23 percent on CBS, the NHL regular season was down 21 percent and the NBA regular season down 10 percent on ABC, and PGA golf is down 6 percent to date, the release said.
Fox stressed that NASCAR is now crushing the NBA by almost every comparative measure. In 1995, regular-season NBA ratings bested NASCAR's slightly, posting a 5.1 compared to a 4.9. This year, NASCAR led by more than a 2-to-1 margin, with the NBA averaging a 2.6. Three NASCAR races (including Daytona) on Fox outdrew the NBA Finals' six-game average of 6.5.
"Everything Fox is doing to capitalize on the sport is working," said Paul Brooks, NASCAR's vice president of broadcasting. "They treat us as the major league property that NASCAR is, and it's delivering for them."
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| Ratings are up in Boston, a market from which New Hampshire International Speedway draws. |
To Fox's delight, ratings among men 18 to 34 — a key group targeted by advertisers — were up 13 percent this year.
Geographically, no clear trend has emerged.
Fox touts that ratings are up in 19 of the nation's top 20 markets compared to 2000, the year before Fox took over and NASCAR went to a consolidated national rights package. But compared to last year, the ratings in 12 of those markets are down, and overall viewership numbers are off 1.7 percent.
New York and Boston are up, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., are down. Seattle-Tacoma is up, Los Angeles and San Francisco are down.
The Southeast is still a NASCAR hotbed, with Birmingham, Ala., Memphis, Raleigh-Durham and Jacksonville all showing increases. But it's actually the "East Central" region of the country that posted the highest ratings for NASCAR this year, averaging a 9.1. That region includes Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh.
With NASCAR three years into its national television package and entrenched as the nation's No. 2 television sport behind the NFL, its reputation in the advertising community has changed dramatically.
"I think NASCAR's always been a lot broader in its appeal than people realize," said Tom Winner, director of media buying at Wieden & Kennedy, New York. "Only when it got a national platform did people recognize that."
