NASCAR Listens to the Fans, Announces Big Change for 2010 Season

At a special teleconference held today, NASCAR Chairman Brian France announced, beginning with the 2010 Daytona 500, all race start times will be earlier and consistent throughout the season.

“Earlier start times seem to be counter intuitive to sports,” said France. “But research has shown the core fan wants to be watching NASCAR earlier in the afternoon.”

Daytime races on the east coast will start at 1pm with evening races, except for the Coca-Cola 600, starting at 7:30pm. Daytime races on the west coast will start at 3pm. All times are eastern standard time.

France went on to say this was going to be very challenging because NASCAR has the longest season of all professional sports and crosses a number of programming grids. “All of our partners have a lot of programming and it all has to fit in. In order to meet these challenges, everyone must work together.”

When NASCAR moved up to mainstream broadcasting; signing deals with Fox and NBC, start times and broadcast channels slowly became inconsistent.

When NBC bowed out and ABC came on board, this variation of broadcast didn’t seem to change.

For several years fans have voiced their displeasure with this type of programming. Usually their displeasure was directed, or should I say misdirected towards NASCAR.  

Chairman of Fox Sports, David Hill, said moving the start times around was a mistake. “I raise my hand and say guilty; we tampered with something we shouldn’t have. The great thing about NASCAR is its traditions, and those traditions come from the core fan.”

Hill said he expects ratings to drop next year, but does expect growth in future years.

When questioned further about the amount of growth, or what’s realistic, John Skipper, Executive V.P. of Content at ESPN, spoke up.

“Were not interested in realistic growth, we are more interested in unrealistic growth.”

As ratings and attendance keep falling, growth in NASCAR could be a disproportionate term.

After dropping 30 percent, an increase of one or two percent is, in fact, growth. But realistically, shouldn’t the actual measurement of growth start at the highest number before the drop off?

Double file restarts, lower ticket prices, and now, consistent starting times, are minor victories, but all steps in the right direction and proof positive that NASCAR is listening more to its fans.