The Top 40

This will accelerate the decline but did not start it. Attendance peaked in 2005 and has shrunk every year since. The basic problem is that NASCAR racing got boring. I mean, booooooorrrriiiiinnnnggg. I wrote about that five years ago.

NASCAR races became boring when NASCAR mandated that every driver had to drive the "Car of Tomorrow" racer beginning in 2008. That means that all the Cup races - the big leagues of NASCAR - are basically just one big IROC series, a now-defunct racing series in which, "Drivers raced identically-prepared stock cars set up by a single team of mechanics in an effort to make the race purely a test of driver ability."

The problem with using the COT in NASCAR is that brand distinction (Ford, Chevy, etc.) now means nothing at all. It did back in, say, Richard Petty's day. The cars now are all the same except for very minor and immaterial differences. In Daytona there was a field of 30-plus cars that all had almost exactly the same performance envelopes and so most all the race looked like a large clump of cars running around the track together.

So drivers aren't racing anymore; the winner usually just turns out to be the luckiest of the last men standing, having missed being wiped out in a pile up. That means the "race" is boring because viewers are not actually watching a competition, just a high-speed game of Russian Roulette. Even the wrecks are not entertaining, not because drivers don't get hurt (that's a good thing) but because they are so predictable and frequent that there is no longer a surprise factor in them and all they do is interrupt what little racing there might be. "Look, honey, twelve cars are spinning out of control again. I'll go get that popcorn for you now."

If they don't fix that their decline will simply continue no matter what kind of "Millennial outreach" they do.

Dead on Mr. Sensing. Said not by a fan, but by one who's been keeping up with NASCAR since long before there was a NASCAR.

"...not because drivers don't get hurt (that's a good thing)..."
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You don't seem to understand that that right there is at the root of why the whole thing is nothing but a big boringfest.

Probably the last time a driver took a risk it cost earnhardt a broke neck or maybe even further back involving number 43's blue and red ply mouth.

Throw the rule book over the south wall, run wut ya brung, and you'll see attendance go thru the moon.

"The world is now so safe everyone is bored to death."
--gs, 2099

SJWs will always take over then ruin an organization.

All of the incentives require this to happen. These people areoften energetic and hard working. Certainly they are ruthless.

But why, you ask, would they destroy their source of income? Because they are not doing so. First they milk the organization dry when taking it over and running it into the ground. Then other SJWs find them new homes and jobs in the next organization on the road to ruin.

NASCAR...turn left.

NASCAR's days are numbered. I knew that when the leftists began complaining vigorously how few "people of color" were involved. The more brazen SJW's just called the sport racist and those who enjoyed it racist/bigot/homophobic Islamophobes. Calls for gay, handicapped moslem drivers and audience went unheeded proving all the invectives were true.

I'm switching to cock-fighting.

Donald Sensing got many of the reasons it hasn't come back. The races are boring now but also the characters that used to be in the sport are gone Earnhardt and Waltrip being two of the biggest.Earnhardt dying was a real kick to the sport. One of the biggest reasons IMO is the great recession, it is still ongoing.

My brother knows several people who used to go for the weekend to all of the races close enough to do so and would take vacation to go to some others. Took an RV many times into the infield of the places they could. But regular middle class and upper middle class NASCAR fans haven't done well enough financially for awhile now to have the money to go. Damn sure the poorer ones can't go and they used to scrape up the cash and go to some you know.

I used to skip classes, in the 12th grade, to watch time trials at Charlotte Motor Speedway.The early 60's. Lived 8 miles from Holman-Moody. Spent a lot of time there.
Fred Lorenzen, Marvin Panch,Richard Petty, Junior Johnson, Cale Yarborough, Fireball Roberts, etc. were names that meant something. Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler.
The pretty boy, reality show races were always boring. Plastic plug-in drivers replaced real men that drove real cars into danger and won the privilege of driving Linda Vaughn (and her hair) home.