ABC-ESPN officials sense a turning point in NASCAR’s TV ratings
RACING//MULHERN COLUMN//SUNDAY JOURNAL
LOUDON, N.H.
TV ratings games may be fun to play, as long as you’re not someone whose fate is wrapped around the ups-and-downs. NASCAR’s explosive rise in viewers when Fox and NBC brought the sport full-time to network television in 2001 was giddy. So NASCAR’s apparent plateauing in TV numbers in 2006 has been the subject of much angst on the sidelines.
But Brian France, this sport’s CEO, has continued to be breezily bullish on the big picture.
Now ABC-ESPN, after more than eight months of heavy promotional saturation bombing across the nation, in its first year back since 2000, says it is indeed seeing a turning point in NASCAR viewership. And not just with the Richmond ratings from last weekend, but in key segments around the country.
Who watches NASCAR races, and who does NASCAR, ABC and Fox want to have watching NASCAR races? Like much in this sport, the answers are tricky.
In fact France, NASCAR and ABC-ESPN are going after more than simply TV ratings – they want to increase ‘the buzz’ about NASCAR, whether it be from walking the streets of New York to playing the Hollywood hot-party game.
Some hard numbers, from Artie Bulgrin, ESPN’s senior VP for research: “We are seeing some big increases in the Cup audience in some unlikely areas. Baltimore up 43 percent. Providence up 32 percent. Philadelphia is up 20 percent, West Palm Beach is up 18 percent, and New York is up 16 percent.”
And he says Juan Pablo Montoya’s success in this sport is having a measurable impact, though he’ll have to wait till the end of the season before having a full analysis of the ethnicity of the NASCAR TV audience.
“But speaking to ethnicity, while we don’t have the exact numbers as to the Spanish-dominant audience watching, we can assume some things when we see that San Antonio Cup ratings are up 30 percent, comparing apples to apples,” Bulgrin says.
More important than pure ratings are the demographic breakouts. And many markets are quite diverse; in Los Angeles-San Diego, for example, four out of every five teenagers are Hispanic. But LA Hispanics are not the same as Miami Hispanics or Philadelphia Hispanics.
And there is the constant debate over Gen-X and Gen-Y and the Boomers, how to market to which group, and why.
“The hope of any sport is to grow the young audience,” Bulgrin says of the NASCAR challenge. “And sports events historically do better among older audiences. Young people are big sports fans, but for them it’s more about the social currency.
“It’s always been a challenge to get the younger viewer. And now it’s even more of a challenge, because you can get the highlights via broadband.
“But NASCAR has to feel really good that it is actually growing the male audience 18-34 this year.
“It’s because of the sheer sport of it, and that coverage gets better and better. We feel high-definition will make a big difference, because it’s much more compelling.
“Perhaps we’re helping attract the younger fan to the events.”
In a new-media world where niche programming is (ital) the (close ital) ticket, NASCAR is big, because with 160-plus television channels (many ‘made-over’ almost yearly), and a seemingly infinite number of internet ‘channels,’ and even a growing internet television system – IPTV—getting seen and heard is not easy. But NASCAR is loud and flashy, and hard to miss.
Which is one reason ABC-ESPN executives like NASCAR, even if the strict TV ratings figures might not be all that impressive right now.
ABC-ESPN is in the first season of an eight-year NASCAR contract. Did NBC bail out too soon? Is ABC-ESPN having to repair the damage done by NBC’s lackadaisical final season in NASCAR?
More immediately, can ABC-ESPN succeed where NBC just gave up, in the championship playoffs?
For apples-to-apples ratings, ABC-ESPN officials are pointing to the Kansas City playoff stop in two weeks. NBC last season pulled a 4.0 rating for that event (down considerably from 2005’s 4.5).
Over last year’s 10-race NASCAR championship series, NBC averaged a 4.5 rating; in 2005’s playoffs NBC averaged 5.0s.
ABC’s coverage of last weekend’s Richmond race Saturday night, in comparison perhaps, was a 4.2.
George McNeilly, ESPN’s communications director: “Where’s the beef, eh? We believe we’re on a journey, and eight-year journey. And we believe there are opportunities to grow over those eight years.
“With ESPN it’s not just about a four-hour race on Sunday, it’s about coverage leading up to the race Monday through Sunday, and treating NASCAR as a seven-day a week sport. And we certainly have the platforms to be able to do that.”
When NASCAR dropped ESPN and ABC at the end of 2000, after some 20 years as TV partners, there was much gnashing of teeth. But network executives insist that the company got out of this sport for the right reason – NASCAR wanted too much money – and that the company is getting back in for the right reason – NASCAR offers significantly increased value at the price point.
Of course ABC-ESPN are now riding the wave that Fox’ David Hill helped create. But ABC-ESPN have clearly raised the bar, in many aspects…and it will be very interesting to see how Fox responds when its next turn comes up in February. What will make that even more interesting is that ESPN will also be at Daytona throughout SpeedWeeks, ostensibly covering the Busch series but also continuing to cover the entire NASCAR scene, albeit without cameras on the 500 itself.
However there is a worrisome question: Is NASCAR losing some of its hard-core fans, during this rush to new markets and new segments of the population?
Bulgrin: “There is not a whole lot of change going on demographically (in NASCAR viewers). But the big thing we’re seeing this year is while the overall household ratings for NASCAR are flat, actually down four percent, that’s mainly because we’re seeing decline in older viewers, 55-plus…which fortunately don’t add or subtract much to advertisers.
“We’re also seeing a decline in the female audience for NASCAR across the board, primarily because they’re spending less time watching NASCAR. Ratings are a function of not only tuning in to the telecast but how long you actually watch.
“But we are seeing some very solid numbers in the younger audience.”
While there has been some criticism about NASCAR perhaps going backwards in losing some of its big events from network broadcast to cable (like Daytona’s July 400 and Indianapolis’ Brickyard 400), ESPN of course is not your average cable channel. It is a world unto itself, with many levels.
Just looking at the numbers, though, Bulgrin says “Cable is doing very, very well. So the combination of TNT and ESPN this year is helping improve the NASCAR audience on cable this, versus FX (Fox’ NASCAR cable channel) last year.
“For example, the U.S. household ratings over the first 12 cable telecasts this year are up nine percent over last year; up 13 percent among men 18-34, and up 19 percent among men 25-54. That’s where we’re seeing a lot of the lift this year.
“And the composition of the Busch and Cup audiences has actually gotten younger. ESPN has always been able to bring a younger audience to whatever sport we broadcast, and that’s holding true for NASCAR too.”
ABC also does the Indy 500, where women like Danica Patrick and Sara Fisher star, but Bulgrin says he can’t say that having female drivers in the field affects the number of female viewers.
Bulgrin also notes that he doesn’t see any particular advantage in tailoring starting times of races for the West Coast audience, as a ploy to increase viewers: “It really doesn’t matter a ton. The people on the West Coast have a behavior, going way back, of being used to getting up at 9 a.m. to watch an NFL game.
“And it doesn’t matter all that much to the national ratings either, because a disproportionate percentage of a sports audience comes from the East Coast and Midwest, because there is a larger number of teams in those regions and the high concentration of the population.”
And Bulgrin insists the internet isn’t stealing viewers from broadcast television. “Nothing could be further from the truth. TV is still the dominant medium.
“The average individual spends as much as three to four as much time watching TV as on the internet. That’s particularly true for teenagers, who spend a lot more time on TV than the internet.
“More people are using the internet but the amount of time spent on the internet doesn’t really improve that much.
“The internet does enhance our overall brand. In fact our best TV viewers are the heaviest users of our website; because they know more about what is going on. TV sends people to our website; our website sends people back to our TV. And we are seeing triple-digit increases in our website visits.”
For example, hits on ESPN.com were up 237 percent during the Richmond race weekend versus last year, and there were 742,000 page-views on its motorsports section those two days.
And the NFL? “We don’t attack the NFL, because they’re our friends,” Bulgrin says. “The NFL is number one in this country, no doubt.
“But the great thing about NFL and college football and NASCAR is there is a significant amount of overlap with NASCAR. That makes it easier for us to navigate those fans to NASCAR.
“And the typical behavior (by TV viewers) is to move from event to event (channel to channel), and we find it is actually good when there are a number of big events going on at the same time, because it brings in a bigger audience.”
Countering the doom-and-gloomsters, McNeilly and Bulgrin see NASCAR’s upside potential. And they do have the luxury of at least seven more years here.
“We’re bullish on NASCAR, seeing opportunities for it to grow across the board—Clearly in metropolitan areas, and clearly in the Northeast and on the West Coast,” McNeilly says.
“There are terrific opportunities among younger audiences. We’ve been very pleased to see growth among the younger audiences, and we expect it to continue. You’ll see Sports Center with Jimmie Johnson, and Kurt Busch will have a spot this next Monday.”
(ESPN, as a cable channel, is carried in 94 million homes; ESPN2 is carried in nearly as many; ABC, as an over-the-air channel too, is carried in 112 million homes.)
Hispanics? France has specifically targeted that market and made a heavy investment.
NASCAR officials say currently some nine percent of their fans are Hispanic; that would compare to the NBA with 16 percent, the NFL with 13 percent, baseball with 13 percent, and soccer with 35 percent.
“It’s a growth opportunity,” McNeilly says of NASCAR and Hispanic market. “NASCAR and ESPN are sharing a vision that there is a growth potential in this community. We have put unprecedented resources around informing, entertaining and increasing awareness among Spanish viewers and listeners. ESPN Deportes, for example, has a daily NASCAR radio show; we have more NASCAR coverage on ESPN.com.
“It is new territory, and we are bullish. We are clearly seeing more Hispanic media coming to the tracks, in addition to our own. And there was unbelievable interest in Mexico City (for the most recent NASCAR stop in that vast city).
“Fans are consuming the sport in a variety of ways they didn’t in the past. We have 18 different platforms: Everyone knows ESPN and ABC. But there is ESPN 360, ESPN.com, ESPN news, ESPN Classic, our content-development group doing documentaries supporting the sport, ESPN Radio, ESPN Deportes, ESPN.Deportes.com. We are using a ‘surround’ approach, similar to what we’ve done with Monday Night Football.
“We are not judging our success on TV ratings alone.
“It is about serving the fans with the news and action and entertainment when they want it and how they want to consume it. And we’re pleased to be on the cutting edge. We’ve been ahead of the curve.
“Fans have more choices than ever before, and people have active lifestyles and may not be able to keep ‘appointment tuning.’
“But we’re up significantly in some key markets.
“We’ve seen some incredible growth in NASCAR over the last 10 to 15 years, transcending its regional roots. We want to take good care of the ‘core,’ but also grow the sport and its awareness and following in other areas.”
Type-casting the average NASCAR fan is no longer simple. It’s more than a Joe Six-pack Southern sport now. And NASCAR fans in the Sonoma-San Francisco area are different from NASCAR fans in Southern California, and different from fans in Kansas and the Midwest….and different from fans at Bristol.
But are there worries that the novelty of this sport may wear off among the new crowd?
No, McNeilly insists. “It has grown into a national pastime. Yes, we realize there are areas for growth…but NASCAR is growing from a position of strength right now.
“NASCAR is an American success story, and we’re bullish on NASCAR.
“We’ve arrived at every track this year with the best and the brightest, who are passionate about the sport, and who have unprecedented resources. And we’re very excited about where we’re at right now.”