At a time when many properties are celebrating the introduction of Nielsen’s Big Data to tout record audience growth, the NASCAR Cup Series — in Year 1 of new deals with Fox Sports, Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBC Sports and Versant — saw a sharp drop in its season-long numbers.
But this was the start of a journey, one that has NASCAR locked up through 2031. And with the sanctioning body seeing a 40% uptick in media rights fees for this cycle, it has afforded them the capability to take some risks in helping to set things up for its audience of the future. That has meant sacrificing some audience numbers among viewers 55+ on linear TV — and it’s a lot of older viewers — in order to seek exposure with some younger viewers who may not have tried the product before.
“We knew there was going to be some sort of a reset, so we did model out exactly a 14% or 15% drop in viewership — at least in Year 1 of the deal,” said Brian Herbst, NASCAR’s EVP and CRO. “Then the expectation was to grow that over time.”