Has NASCAR Lost The South? Ex-Driver Unloads After Seeing "100,000 Empty Seats"
It hasn't been the greatest week in the world for NASCAR. Sure, they've had a better week than Dianna Russini, but that's a low bar. Other than her, though?Yeah, it's been a rough go of it for the folks in the big glass building across from Daytona International Speedway. Of course, that's because of two major headaches in the racing world: TV ratings, and attendance. Those two things drive folks who make a lot more money than me crazy, and both took a major hit at Bristol last weekend. Because I'm always ahead of the trends, I already wrote about both. I told you on Monday that the grandstands at Bristol were embarrassing. They were. I wrote on Wednesday that the TV ratings for Bristol were alarmingly bad. They were. And now, former NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield is officially hitting the panic button after what he saw last weekend:"Check out what the NASCAR grandstands used to look like when I raced at Bristol," Mayfield wrote in a lengthy Facebook post. "When the biggest story is how many people are staying home to watch a golf tournament in Georgia, the sport is in a coma."Ty Gibbs gets his first win in front of 100,000 empty seats. It looked like a COVID era race out there. If the ‘World’s Fastest Half Mile’ can’t out draw a Sunday at Augusta, then NASCAR has officially lost the south."Is it the car? Is it the drivers? Or has the "Colosseum" just become a graveyard? Tell me I'm wrong."Yikes. Just a brutal takedown from a driver who doesn't exactly have the greatest relationship with NASCAR. That's fair. I will admit, you have to take everything Jeremy Mayfield says with a grain of salt because bridges have certainly been burned. I don't want to get into it here, but it all stems from a drug test back in 2009. You can look up the rest if you'd like. Anyway, back to Bristol … Mayfield is 100% right in this case. The stands were half-empty. FS1 averaged fewer than 2 million viewers for the first time in the history of that channel. It was bad in the stands, and it was equally awful in living rooms across America. For example, the grandstands certainly look … bare … when you watch this in-car camera from Kyle Busch:Not great! Has NASCAR "officially lost the south," as Mayfield said? Perhaps. I've long said that NASCAR abandoned its fanbase years ago. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out, though. They left places like Rockingham and Kentucky for Mexico and downtown Chicago. They spent all of 2020, and beyond, virtue-signaling their tails off. Nobody likes the Next Gen car. Steve Phelps was a disaster for the sport in terms of public image. Now, they've gotten better in recent years. I will admit that. The series has, somewhat, returned to Rockingham. Chicagoland is back on the schedule. The Clash at Bowman Gray is miles better than Los Angeles. Phelps is out, thankfully. The playoff format is gone. Again, they've taken steps to improve. You can't say they're not trying, because I just gave you 14 examples of how they are. But is it too late? Maybe. We'll see. Jeremy Mayfield certainly has his doubts, for whatever that's worth.
