Yep, I’m renaming NASCAR. The acronym will remain the same but from now on it will mean:
National Association for Stock Commercial Auto Racing
As I watched the Coke Zero Sugar 400 Commercial Fest at Daytona last night there was a nice bit of NASCAR racing between commercial breaks, split screen commercials, and commercial reads.
If NASCAR viewership isn’t declining I’d be surprised. I wonder if anyone has put together the actual time spent on commercials and the actual time spent showing the race? I have a feeling it would be close to 50/50, perhaps 60/40, in favor of commercials.
How would I personally measure it? Easy. Any commercial that detracts from what I’d prefer to see. That means commercial breaks, commercials split screen with racing, and commercial reads over the broadcast.
Heck, the split screen commercials with racing view of the broadcast favors the commercial in a larger portion of the screen. Guess what I do when that happens? I mute the TV because there’s zero color commentary and race analysis. It’s all commercial audio.
If NASCAR took commercial breaks like the NFL does it would take 12 hours to complete a single NASCAR race.
F1 does it the right and proper way: commercial free.
NASCAR, please, do your fans a favor and sign a broadcast deal with ESPN or another broadcast provider to show a set of races commercial free.
Until then you have a really substandard product.
UPDATE: I posted a slightly modified version of this to the NASCAR Discord. Doubt it’ll see any feedback.