For nearly every major sports league, television rights fees are its biggest revenue generators and the lifeblood needed to keep teams in the black. This is no different with sponsor-centric NASCAR, whose teams, in part, use television air time as a selling point to potential partners whose brand could be seen by millions of viewers.
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The advent of streaming services has further changed how sports are presented to viewers. Now, in large numbers, races and games are being watched on cell phones, computers and other mobile devices. Gone are the days when a fan would tune in to a broadcast or cable channel to see their favorite sporting event or teams, as many leagues around the globe have signed rights fees with streaming platforms like ESPN+, Amazon, Peacock, Paramount+ and a plethora of others. NASCAR is no exception.
Figuring out how that all comes together, in an uncertain time for broadcast rights, is the responsibility of NASCAR executive Brian Herbst, senior vice president of media and productions. Herbst is tasked with putting the puzzle pieces together — made all the more challenging because NASCAR’s current contracts with Fox Sports and NBC Sports expire at the end of the 2024 season, setting up pivotal rights negotiations that will begin in the spring of 2023, shaping NASCAR’s direction in both the short and long term.
NASCAR averaged 2.93 viewers across Fox and NBC Sports in 2021, down 4 percent from last year (3.06 million) and 6 percent from 2019 (3.11 million), according to Sports Media Watch. But excluding the Daytona 500, which was impacted by an hours-long rain delay, viewership (2.866 million average excluding Daytona) is on par with 2020 (2.91 million average) and 2019 (2.871 million average). Cup Series racing finished with its third consecutive year of share growth, up 14 percent since 2018 and up 8 percent over the 2020 season. NASCAR ranked as the first- or second-most viewed sport of the weekend 17 times. From the Aug. 22 Michigan race to Sept. 26’s Las Vegas playoff race, Cup Series races saw six consecutive weeks of year-over-year viewership increases, the longest streak since 2011.
According to SMW, the Cup Series finale from Phoenix averaged a 1.95 rating/3.21 million viewers on NBC, up 4 percent in ratings and 5 percent in viewership from last year (1.9, 3.06 million), when it became the championship race for the first time. Compared to 2019’s finale from Homestead, ratings were down 13 percent (from a 2.2 rating) and viewership down 14 percent (from 3.74 million).
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Herbst spoke with The Athletic before the Cup Series championship finale at Phoenix Raceway about a number of topics: ratings, NASCAR’s relationship with Fox Sports and NBC Sports, future negotiations, whether a Cup Series race could exclusively be aired on a streaming platform, why NASCAR feels it is one of the most stable sports leagues on television and why it’s well-positioned to see a growth in viewership in 2022.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.
Coming off the 2021 season, how would you assess where NASCAR is at in the television landscape, the ratings NASCAR has earned and the direction NASCAR is headed regarding its next contract?
I think we’re really well-positioned both today and going into the rights discussion in 2023. I think that the relationship between our network partners and NASCAR has changed for the better. And I’d say our perception as a property has been turned on its head over the last two to three years. So if you think about where we were in 2018, when we started to make a number of the systemic and seismic changes to the industry between bringing NASCAR and ISC together and SMI going private, I think if you think about where we were in 2018 following a wave of driver retirements — Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Jr. — that certainly had an impact on viewership.
I’m pleasantly surprised about the stability of our viewership number over the course of the last three or four years. So in a world that is more competitive than ever, where Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ and HBO Max and Peacock are all grabbing more eyeballs and more attention, for us to continue to increase from a share perspective of those eyeballs on linear TV, so that’s traditional TV, and then to remain essentially flat in viewership over the course of the last three years, there’s not a lot of sports properties that can tell that same story. Certainly, there’s not a lot of sports properties that are on our scale that can tell that story.
Obviously, NASCAR would like to see growth, but looking at the numbers, is NASCAR pleased with where it’s at right now?
I don’t think we’re ever content with where we are, but I think in the environment that we’re in, we’re really pleased with the stability of those numbers.
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Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s president, had an interesting comment when he spoke to reporters, saying that NASCAR is the most stable sports property on television since 2018. Can you elaborate on why NASCAR believes that to be the case?
The data would back that up. So from 2018 to 2021, and I’m projecting let’s say what was a projected flat number for Phoenix, will be around a decline of 7 percent. And that’s with a rain-impacted Daytona 500 in 2021. But even with that decline, if you look at any other Tier 1 sports property — any property essentially that’s over 100,000 viewers or so on an average minute basis, and those are the properties that tend to have really lucrative rights deals — for any property that has completed their regular season, we performed better than any one of those other properties from 2018 to 2021. The only potential exception to that at the end of their season will be the NFL. So to the extent that it’s us and NFL in the same company from a stability perspective, I think that’s something that we can be proud of. (The Athletic obtained data that confirmed Herbst’s point).
Do your television partners, NBC and Fox, have the same viewpoint in regards to your television ratings?
They do. We are one of the properties that are really, really working for them. From an ad sales perspective: Ad Sales for Fox completely sold out every single ad unit on big Fox or FS1 throughout all of 2021. NBC was up from an advertising perspective; it has been years since that has been the case. So there is a direct correlation between our viewership trends and the advertising revenue that is attributed to our property. When we turned around that viewership narrative, I would say in 2019 and 2020, we started to see new brands come back to the sport. I won’t disclose exact numbers, but there were 23 new brands that were not in the sport in 2019 that are buying ads for Fox today.
Looking ahead to 2022 and your continued efforts to try and find that growth and obtain more viewers, later start times are related to this. NASCAR announced recently that start times for next year’s races, largely across the board, are going to be later. Is that directly because of television and trying to capture more viewers?
I would say it’s trying to capture more viewers and trying to capture more fans. We are a national sport; we will deliver 3 million viewers in a typical NASCAR Cup Series race. There is a push and pull between the media experience sitting back on your couch versus the at-track experience. But because we’re delivering 3 million viewers on a typical Sunday, and you’re probably getting 50,000 to 60,000 people in the stands, the way we look at that is we’re simply trying to deliver our content and our product to the most amount of eyeballs possible. If we were to run a typical race at 1 p.m., we’re going to get about 10 percent fewer viewers at 1 p.m. than we would at 3 p.m. So if we’re looking at 3 million viewers, that’s about 300,000 people that would not be able to see our content simply because it’s early on and trying to bring in the West Coast viewer.
Brad Paisley joined the NBC Sports crew during NASCAR’s visit to Nashville Superspeedway. (Christopher Hanewinckel / USA Today)
Looking at the change of viewership from a 1 o’clock start time to a 3 o’clock start, it seems almost silly not to cater to that audience where you have a bigger opportunity for growth. Is that fair to say?
I think to the extent that if we were a smaller, more niche property that was more dependent on either an at-track revenue model or track attendance, then that narrative would probably be a little bit different. But because we’re such a large property, such a scalable property and we’re delivering these 3 million viewers, if we didn’t have later start times we would be down viewership almost every single week.
Another change for 2022 is that there are going to be more races on network TV, and on the NBC side races on cable are shifting from NBCSN to USA Network, which is in more homes than NBCSN (NBCSN is shutting down at the end of 2021). What does that present for NASCAR in terms of going out and trying to capture an audience?
It’s a great viewership opportunity. The network windows and broadcast windows have never been more important than they are in 2021. Just based on how competitive it is for time, attention, eyeballs, cord-cutting and just the macro changes that are happening in media broadly. If you back up three years to 2019, we did 16 races on a network and 20 races on cable in 2022. This will flip essentially in 2022; 19 races will be on a network and 17 races will be on cable. That’s the first time that has happened since 2009 where we’ll have more network races than cable races.
What really has allowed that change to be possible is a lot of the recent scheduling changes that we’ve made. When we lay out a schedule that includes new markets in Nashville, when we lay out a schedule change that has a Bristol Dirt format change that Fox is incredibly excited about, those are essentially new tentpole events on the schedule. And they demand a network window.
As we’re putting our schedule together, we are ensuring that for these new tentpole events or races in new markets, that we have a network window home for those new events. Part of it is just because of the changes in the media environment, those network windows are more important. And because of the changes we’ve made as an industry that allows for the scheduling innovation that we’ve had over the last two or three years, our case to the networks for those network windows is a little bit more palatable.
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How critical is it for NASCAR to have a good 2022 in terms of viewership as you look ahead to negotiating the next TV contract?
We have 36 races after Phoenix to model out our network numbers before they start to plan for the 2023 (negotiating) rights cycle. The fact that we’re as bullish as we are about our positioning in 2022 going into 2023, that is real. To say that 2022 is important would be an understatement because it’s our audition year for the rights deal in 2023. And I feel like we’re peaking at the right time, for sure. I probably would have been in a different position if the rights deal came up in 2018. But it is definitely important for us as a sport to be heads-down and doing everything we can in 2022 to make the biggest impact and position us well for 2023.
Has either Fox or NBC indicated that they’re interested in re-upping?
We have a really good relationship with both Fox and NBC. We’ve been partners with Fox for 20-plus years. NBC, we performed exceptionally well for them on the broadcast side, on the cable side; our OTT product, TrackPass, has doubled our expectations in 2020, tripled some expectations in 2021. So we’re performing across the three different buckets that are really meaningful to monetize sports rights: broadcast, cable and OTT. We feel pretty good about where we’re trending for those discussions with Fox, NBC and anybody else.
The last TV deal NASCAR negotiated in 2013 was a record television deal for NASCAR. But part of that record television deal was the fact that there were going to be more races on cable, with FS1 coming in and NBC Sports pushing NBCSN. That was a concession NASCAR made for the big contract. Looking back, knowing that it’s probably best for NASCAR to be on a network channel as opposed to cable, is that a concession NASCAR would have made?
If we go back to 2013, there was a hot market for sports cable channels and NASCAR was the beneficiary of that hot market. So if we were going to have a partnership with a company the likes of the Fox Corporation or NBC Universal, there needed to be a significant allocation of our races that went to cable to have a network partner as powerful and blue chip in nature as each one of those. I definitely think that was the right call at the time.
The media landscape has evolved over the course of the last eight years. And what both Fox and NBC have done a really good job doing with us is evolving their product and evolving the distribution mix to make it current — digital products, streaming in-car cameras on platforms like YouTube or Twitter or Fox having watch parties or alternate broadcasts on their various Fox Sports platforms. And, obviously, the network window is increasing as well.
What’s written in a contract isn’t necessarily how the deal plays out over the course of those eight to 10 years. So to the extent that you have a really good working relationship with your broadcast partners, which we do, it’s a balancing act between viewership and economics and making sure we don’t compromise the model that Fox and NBC have to work with, especially on the cable side. I think they’ve been really great partners. working with us to tweak the distribution as needed.
Fox Sports has increasingly brought in current drivers, like Erik Jones (right) to its broadcast booth and drivers-only broadcasts. (Jasen Vinlove / USA Today)
You mentioned evolution. The next evolution in viewing habits is streaming. The NFL is going to have a game exclusively on Amazon; IndyCar is going to have a race exclusively on Peacock. Is NASCAR comfortable having a Cup Series race exclusively on a streaming platform, which is great in some respects, but will also limit the viewership possibilities compared to a race on a broadcast network?
You have to look at the penetration levels and the trajectory of those platforms at the time that we do our rights deal. I think that an answer that I would give you today in 2021 probably isn’t going to hold up in terms of where the world is in 2023. Our intent is to make our content as broadly available to our fans who are watching NASCAR as they are consuming content.
Where ESPN+ or Peacock are today from a subs perspective versus where they will be in two years, it may change that calculus. For us, we are a linear TV property today. We will be a linear TV property, traditional TV property, through 2024. To the extent that the platform penetration levels change or the trajectory of those platforms changes between now and then, that’s something that we would take a look at. But it is similar to the dilemma that you correctly called out in 2013. It is and it will be a balancing act for us in the industry in 2023 to get that distribution mix right because we’re not going to have all of our races on broadcast, we’re not going to have all of our races on over the top platforms, we will be somewhere in between. And a lot of that will be dictated by the penetration levels that are there at the time of the year.
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Does it make it more complicated that NASCAR is a sponsor-driven sport where it’s imperative to get those sponsors in front of people?
I’m spending a lot of time right now meeting with teams individually to walk them through this kind of tradeoff between total viewership and giving us the best chance for success from a consumption perspective, both in 2025 and whenever the next TV deal runs through. That is more critical to our sport than probably any other sport in America.
There are certain deals that we could not do. There are a number of soccer properties out there that are shifting to direct consumer; we will not have an all-out shift to direct consumer. But almost every single property — the NFL and NHL had two recent rights deals that included some OTT rights. And frankly, OTT platforms offer access to a younger demographic than we have on cable TV today. So we are spending a lot of time right now talking to and gathering feedback from our industry, the teams, the tracks and others so that we are as prepared as possible for that discussion in 2023. Not just from a financial perspective, but from what is the distribution sweet spot that makes the most sense for our industry and our fan base.
What’s been the reaction from teams as you walk them through this?
I’d say in particular, in the short term, those network windows are really, really important. If you look at average viewership for a network race for NASCAR right now it is 3.7 million viewers, the average viewership for cable races is 2.3 million viewers. Team sponsors are paying attention to that discrepancy as well, to the extent that those network windows continue to be as meaningful in terms of our viewership number. I think you’ll continue to see a premium on those network windows from the team side.
What is the sweet spot for how long a race should be from a television perspective? You hear often it should be around three hours. I ask this question because two of the last three races (prior to Phoenix), at Texas, at Martinsville, were 3 hours, 42 minutes and that’s in the fall against heavy competition.
There is a lot of tradition in these race lengths. Certain races you could name are more tradition-rich than others. The Coca-Cola 600 is a test of man versus machine and that is one I would not see changing anytime soon. I do think it’s fair to think about a race length that was typically 500 miles and are we holding the attention span of a younger demo before a 500-mile race.
There are also financial tradeoffs to that as well. For instance, on the TV side, there are fewer advertising pods that you can pack into that type of race length. I think that you will see us take a hard look at race lengths over the course of the next two or three years. Any change that we would make would be done just like anything else, with a lot of input and feedback from the industry, teams, tracks, and we have fan council research we rely on a lot, and nothing that we would make would be sudden in nature. It would be, let’s see how this works at this venue, let’s see how that works at this venue.
You’ve seen a lot of change in our industry over the course of the last two or three years. I think race lengths is one of those topics that we do discuss internally and we’ll take a hard look at that just like we do everything.
Are 36 points races plus two exhibition races a right number for television or is that something that you could see tweaked?
I think probably too early to tell. We feel really good about the length of our season. We couldn’t come on any earlier, frankly, so we’ll run the Clash the weekend before the Super Bowl at the L.A. Coliseum and then we’ll run the Daytona 500 the week after the Super Bowl. And then, we run almost all the way through November with only one off weekend in 2022. I feel like the season running from February to November is probably the right length of season for us, but it’s probably too early to tell if there could be any other changes going into the next rights cycle.
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Going against the NFL in the fall can be a tough proposition. There’s been some thought that maybe getting out of the NFL’s way a little sooner could boost ratings. Is shortening the schedule back a little bit something to consider?
The only way to get out of the NFL season would be to do one of two things. We could shorten the season in terms of the number of races, which would have an impact on industry sponsorship, economics, the number of dates the tracks get, and certainly the size of our TV deal. So I think that’s probably unlikely. The other scenario that we could do is run midweek races, which we were forced to do in 2020. The good news for us is we have all the data from how midweek races performed versus how we perform on a Sunday against the NFL. I’ll tell you ratings: We would do about 0.9 to a 1.0 to a 1.1 for midweek races (on cable) on a Wednesday, and there’s a lot of stress on the industry to do that Sunday-Wednesday-Sunday model.
When we go up against the NFL on a cable race, we’re usually in a 1.3 to 1.4-1.5 range. So even if we’re competing versus the NFL, we hold up pretty well.
Fair to say midweek races are probably an idea that’s come and gone?
We needed them in 2020. They did not find their way into the 2022 schedule.
Steve Phelps said, “We are going to have our most successful year on TV, weather permitting, that we’ve had in a long, long time.” He’s very bullish on 2022 and where he thinks the ratings are going to be. Are you as bullish?
I am, yeah, very, very much so.
Rain impacting the Daytona 500 cost us about 5 percent of our season average (this year’s race, delayed by nearly six hours, earned an average of 4.83 million viewers). So if you look at where we were in 2021 from a viewership perspective, where we’re going to net out versus 2019, we’re actually flat from a viewership perspective if you take out the Daytona 500. Because that race is so large from a viewership perspective, you’re talking about nine million viewers. Bristol Dirt, another tentpole event that we expected big things from in 2021 and expect big things in 2022, was also rain-impacted and pushed to Monday afternoon for a 4 p.m. ET start time, and was probably two points off the season average based on where we expected that to be. Last year, Indy’s start time was 1 p.m. ET; it will have a start time of 3 p.m. next year. And the last one was Talladega (in October). I wouldn’t trade anything that happened with Bubba Wallace winning at Talladega for the world, but that race ran on Monday afternoon on NBCSN versus on NBC on Sunday, which is always one of our higher-performing races.
The aggregate effect of those four races was probably somewhere in the eight to nine points range, and then you have another network window next year as well that will help the season average as well. So what Steve is referring to, the opportunity that we have in 2022 if the weather cooperates, is one that we’re pretty excited about.
How NASCAR is presented on television by its partners is a hot-button topic, including among some of the industry. Chase Elliott, for example, recently voiced his opinion on the matter. So too did Denny Hamlin. The belief is that maybe NASCAR’s partners don’t always present the sport in the best light or maybe educate their viewers compared to some other motorsports forums. What is NASCAR’s perspective on this criticism?
I don’t think that commentary on a broadcast booth or a studio show is something that is unique to NASCAR. Every sport has a very passionate fan base. They have their favorites in terms of who they like or who they do not like in the booth. I think that both Fox and NBC have done a great job in surrounding their booth with the right talent, the right expertise. Both Fox and NBC have shown that they will bring the stars of yesterday into the booth today and they will invest where they need to invest to have the star power of our sport.
(Photo: David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)