in 2002, 300,000 people filled the grandstands to watch it.
in 2012 125,000 fans were there
but this year? Only about 35,000.
That's nearly a 90% drop in attendance. If you have a business, and 90% of your customers stop showing up.... its time to panic, or shut down.
Is it general malaise over the vanilla cars with zero resemblance to real cars?
Are fans fed up with the lack of passes, leader changes, and competition? Last year, Kyle Busch sat in front and led 149 of 170 laps.
Is it that some of Nascar's famous stars have recently retired? Or is this an indication that Nascar lost it's mojo of the past 2 decades, and people would rather sit in front of a $500 60 inch flatscreen and watch Netflix?
Are people fed up with the multiple sponsor titles that are a sentence instead of a title?
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Brantley Gilbert Big Machine Brickyard 400 ... I don't even know what Brantley Gilbert is about. Never heard of him.
Indy is a track that at the end of May sold out — the full 350,000, including the infield — for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500... so it's not the facilities, costs, or tickets. This place can sell out with a different set of race cars to watch
https://twitter.com/MVanTryon/status/889189593970618373/photo/1
The NASCAR bubble has finally burst. Saw this coming four years ago at Charlotte, the big money sponsors like Lowes were pulling out which was an indication that the interest was waning. It isn't one particular thing, but many-that you mention, as well as the culture changing, people just don't relate to NASCAR, because they're not car people, an automobile is just an expensive necessary appliance and that's about it. Its amazing to think that about 5 years ago the was talk that Indy car racing was floundering so badly and NASCAR was doing so well that the day might come when the Indy 500 would be run with stock cars. Well that proved to not be true by a country mile! Indy car isn't all that healthy, but they had their reality check a long time ago, now its NASCAR's turn.
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