SBJ Media: NASCAR TV Performance Stable Despite Upended Season

Remembering our veterans today.

NASCAR VIEWERSHIP: AN ALL-TIME LOW, AND THAT'S OK

• NASCAR and TV network execs have to be moderately happy with the sport’s TV performance this year, even as its Cup Series hit an all-time viewership low. Despite challenges from the pandemic, the Cup Series finished on time with viewership figures that are relatively flat, SBJ’s Austin Karp reports. Viewership dropped just 2% for all 36 races, including rain postponements and midweek races.
  
  
• Like the rest of the sports world, NASCAR stopped racing for more than two months when the pandemic first hit (from March 8-May 17). Despite competing with a loaded fall sports calendar as its playoffs got under way, NASCAR’s playoff viewership posted an increase heading into the championship this past Sunday at Phoenix. However, the race was the least-watched Cup finale on record (3.3 million viewers), facing competition not only from the NFL, but also from a hefty spike in the cable news audience. The playoffs finished down just 2% when excluding a one rained-out race from both 2020 and 2019.
  
  
• It may seem odd that NASCAR and network execs would be pleased with a record low viewership. But 2020 is an odd kind of year. The fact that NASCAR stayed relatively flat despite staging more mid-week races is significant. The fact that viewership did not crater amid competition from a crowded sports calendar offers a reason to celebrate. All told, races on the broadcast and cable networks of Fox and NBC averaged 3.058 million viewers this season.
  
  
• NASCAR had some bright spots this season. Its digital platform generated more than 202 million total visits, +7% from 2019. NASCAR also generated 5 million race-day social media mentions, more than doubling the total from 2019, and social media engagements increased 56%. On FS1, weekday editions of "NASCAR Race Hub" were up 11% this season compared to 2019 (show started back on Jan. 27).

CBS READY FOR BUSY SPORTS WEEKEND (EVEN WITHOUT COLLEGE FOOTBALL)

• Back in September, CBS Sports Chair Sean McManus spoke of negotiating to have the SEC and NFL alter schedules to allow the network to carry the final two rounds of The Masters. During a press conference this week, McManus reinforced the “great partnership with the NFL and SEC" that allowed for such a weekend. "It’s a busy week. It’s a complicated week," he said.
  
  
• News of the cancellation of LSU-Alabama, which was scheduled to kick off Saturday at 6pm ET, made this week a lot more complicated for CBS. In place of a game that would have brought a huge audience, the network will run its college football studio show from the end of The Masters until 6pm. The 6-8pm block has been returned to local affiliates. CBS’ entertainment group will take back the 8-10pm block.
  
  
• Played in the fall with no gallery, this year’s Masters will look and feel different from any of the previous ones. CBS will use drones and unique camera angles that will help give the tournament a different look. But for coordinating producer Lance Barrow, who is retiring after working his 44th Masters, his job will remain the same. “I don’t see how it will be any different,” he said. “We’re going to show the person who wins the tournament and all of the ones challenging. ... From our standpoint in the TV truck, it will be just like any other Masters.”
  
  
• This Barrow essay on Golf.com, detailing his career, is worth a click. “Talk about getting lucky,” he wrote. “The only job I’ve ever had in my adult life is working for CBS Sports.”
  
  
• While McManus would not make a specific ratings projection for this weekend, he did offer this: “I’m pretty sure that the Masters will be the highest rated golf tournament of the year by a wide margin.” McManus cautioned that the Masters will see competition from the NFL, college football and cable news, but still said that he believed the tournament would pull "really good numbers."

PGA TOUR LEANS INTO SPORTS BETTING

• With the eyes of the golf world on The Masters this week, the PGA Tour’s embrace of legalized gambling continues to garner headlines, such as this one from the Washington Post’s Rick Maese. This year, the Tour has cut deals with DraftKings, BetMGM and PointsBet.
  
  
• PGA Tour Chief Media Officer Rick Anderson says those deals are more about growing the sport’s audience right now rather than adding new revenue streams. “If you want to talk about the knocks on our audience, everybody goes to age,” he said. “What are ways that we can expand that audience, make it younger and make it more diverse? We think betting is a real opportunity to do that.”
  
  
• The Tour is not working on any kind of timetable to bring in big sports betting revenue, Anderson said. Rather, they are more interested in the statistics around fan engagement that comes with sports betting.
  
  
• Anderson: “We feel that in the future, there is a revenue opportunity associated with betting. But it is not the driving force for us. The driving force for us is to move ourselves carefully into the legal betting space, find people that want to start betting on the PGA Tour, and then they find us and become fans. ... Our big wins are going to be about fans. Revenue is going to be an extra benefit to it, if and when it happens, but it won't be the driving force.”

SPEED READS

• After nine weeks, the NFL is averaging 14.86 million viewers for game telecasts, per SBJ's Austin Karp. That figure is now down 6% from 15.87 viewers at the same point last season. Week 9 numbers, amid hefty cable news competition, were not pretty. CBS led the way with Steelers-Cowboys in the national window (22.7 million), up 1% from last year when Chargers-Steelers was featured. CBS was down 11% for the regional window. The Saints' blowout of the Buccaneers on "Sunday Night Football" was down 24% on NBC. Fox's singleheader was down 15%. Patriots-Jets on "Monday Night Football" was down 30% from Cowboys-Giants last year on ESPN.
  
  
• A divorce between ESPN and Dan Le Batard seems to be inching closer, following comments Le Batard made on his radio show today. After ESPN laid off one of his producers, Chris Cote, Le Batard hired him back and will personally pay his salary. From today’s show (transcribed by Kevin Draper): “We were blindsided by him being let go. It’s the greatest disrespect of my professional career that I got no notice, no collaboration.”
  
  
• Longtime D.C.-based lawyer Phil Hochberg emailed after reading my piece on networks having to use spotters remotely in order to comply with social distancing protocols. Hochberg: “Having spent a good part of my youth doing spotting work on football -- including a three-man radio booth with Jack Buck and Hank Stram at Super Bowl XVII and Spanish language at XXVI (where I couldn’t understand a word they were announcing) -- I just don’t see how it can be done remotely. But then again, not only am I old school, but old age.”
  
  
• How big was the impact of election week on sports? Just take a look at CNN's results. The 40-year-old network had its most-watched week ever from Nov. 2-8. CNN Digital had five of its six biggest days of all time.
   
• FuboTV signed up more subscribers than expected in Q3, and chief exec David Gandler touted sports as a key driver, notes Investor's Business Daily. Gandler cited the heavy sports calendar and the addition of networks like ESPN and MLB Network as helping fuel growth. FuboTV Exec Chair Edgar Bronfman Jr. also cited online sports wagering as a market the company intends to enter
  
  
• With four races remaining, the viewership for F1 telecasts in the U.S. is down only 5% on ESPN/ESPN2 compared to 2019, SBJ's Austin Karp reports. The two networks averaged 639,000 viewers over 12 race telecasts. No races have aired on ABC this year, whereas a few were on the broadcast network in 2019. This season also saw the cancellation of the popular Monaco Grand Prix on Memorial Day weekend, no U.S.-based races and Lewis Hamilton dominate the circuit (winning nine races so far).
  
  
• Nielsen is adding 55 million devices across smart TV and set-top boxes to the addressable measurement of its national TV currency, notes MediaPost. This will include measurement from DirecTV, Dish Network and Vizio smart TV sets. Nielsen plans to release preview data in the first half of 2021. Company data also shows that 77% of U.S. homes have at least one enabled connected device, with streaming accounting for 25% of TV usage in those homes.
  
  
• Add Big Ten Network to the list of networks seeing college football games disappear from the schedule for this weekend. After CBS lost Alabama-LSU and Texas A&M-Tennessee yesterday, BTN today lost a potentially big audience for Maryland-Ohio State, as the game was postponed due to COVID-19 concerns.

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Something on the media beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).