NASCAR Martinsville Ratings Slide 22%

From ESPN PR ...

ESPN’s live telecast of the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway on Sunday, Oct. 28, earned a 2.8 household coverage rating (2.4 U.S. rating), averaging 3,617,199 viewers, according to the Nielsen Company.

Last year’s telecast earned a 3.6 household coverage rating, while the rating was the same as the 2010 race telecast.

Greensboro, N.C., led the nation with a 7.6 rating, followed by Birmingham (6.3), Richmond and Charlotte (5.9) and Norfolk (5.6).

Comments

[vern]

Ratings are falling as the races now are getting boring as without multiple cars challenging for the lead its simply just like a parade or follow the fastest car while they lap the field. While we debate what fans like, facts are this race and most of the past races for Cup have been terrible in my opinion, as NNS races are holding their own or even up in ratings--go figure?

Whats funnier is that the President of Nascar was on Windtunnel last sunday and basically said everything is fine, as they are giving the fans what they want--really--couse they arent going to admit problems, now are they?

This looks like a mirror image of how most Indycar races have been for yrs now with one or two faster cars contending and the rest just playing follow the leader(s) taking up space wasting tires and fuel, with some exceptions of course of decent races with multiple cars contending for the lead/win etc. Course we all know Nascar is way above Indycar in popularity, blah blah blah--but if fans get tired of it who knows what could happen, management shakeups in Nascar perhaps--wait and see?

[Brian]

This definately does not account for all the ratings drop( I think Sandy prep here in the NE added to that),but I can view NASCAR on the web, you cannot view NFL on the web (except for a few), so my big screen gets NFL and computer or Ipad get NASCAR.

[pressdog]

That's a great point, Brian, and knowing NASCAR they are measuring web traffic in some way as well.

[elephino]

Hmm...2.8->3.6->2.8 is interesting. Could be Sandy, could be something else spiked the ratings last year, could be a bit of both.

P.S. My apologies to NASCAR for not being able to increase ratings for the last two races while I'm in the US, but I have bought 2 tickets (though turns out not absolutely required) for Phoenix.