This is strange.
I was just looking at nascar.com to see how the points standings are running, and I found this amazing link.
If I didn’t know better, NASCAR’s own Web site is reporting something that could easily be construed as bad news! And illustrating it with a picture showing a half-empty grandstand. A happenstance that can be explained in only one of three ways.
1. A mistake. Some rookie, some intern, some kid, saw a NASCAR-related notes package on the Associated Press wire and linked it to the site. And that rookie/intern/kid will be fired sometime today.
2. A change in policy. The most instinctively defensive of major American sports organizations (we are not minority unfriendly; our fans aren’t knuckle-dragging backwoodsmen; those are not Confederate flags in the infield) has realized, finally, that there is “no such thing as bad news” — something most others sports long ago recognized. That as long as someone is talking about you or reading about you, it is a good thing 99 percent of the time. Even if the news is “negative.”
3. Part of a particularly subtle campaign to begin reducing expectations for 2009. Now, “NASCAR” and “subtle” have rarely belonged in the same sentence, particularly when it comes to image. It’s always “bigger and better!” from its house organs. But if 2009 is going to be an attendance train wreck, well, let’s establish it early, and let’s let the drivers speak to it and suggest, “Well, the economy is in bad shape,” and get the fan base ready for a string of shrinking crowds.
This could be a variation on the ploy the track in Fontana, Calif., appeared to follow two weeks ago, when it allowed to go unchecked speculation that it might draw as few as 30,000 people for its race. Then, when something like 60,000 showed up (capacity, about 125,000; announced, 78,000), track president Gillian Zucker proudly marched into the media room and reveled in the “success” she and her staff had wrung out of possible disaster. When, in fact, it was a bad crowd (even with a highly generous giveaway by the region’s leading grocery chain), the worst yet for a NASCAR race in Fontana (aside from the rain-delayed 2008 race). But expectations had been pushed so low, she could spin it as a success story.
Maybe NASCAR is going to go that way. Depress expectations, blame the economy again and again (it’s not about our sport going stagnant, or how the same four teams dominate year after year) … and that gives the organization and all its operators wiggle room to avoid harsh self-examination.
It’s the economy, stupid! And we can read about it on nascar.com
3 responses so far ↓
1 Chuck Hickey // Mar 10, 2009 at 3:49 PM
What is with this sudden NASCAR fascination? Looking to see how the standings are? After four races? Watching NASCAR over college basketball?
What next, blogging from OSS on Saturday night?
Where has the real PaulO gone? Come back. We miss you.
2 Nate Ryan // Mar 10, 2009 at 4:25 PM
This is typically confusing (really, what involving NASCAR, isn’t?), but nascar.com isn’t a house organ a la mlb.com, nfl.com, nba.com, etc.
Nascar.com is run independently by Turner Sports, which is licensed the rights to the nascar name by the sanctioning body. They trumpet the fact that they have independent editorial content; and nascar has no hand at all in site production or promotion, etc.
Nascar.com frequently runs opinion columns by guys such as longtime buddy (and fine wordsmith) david caraviello that hammer nascar. They also pick up wire stories of all sorts, all in the name of driving traffic to the site, and it seems to work because their numbers dwarf everybody, including espn.com (it also helps that nascar.com has a “superstore” section where fan can buy stuff by the truckload).
All this doesn’t mean that nascar doesn’t get royally ticked about some of the stuff that runs on the site bearing their brand/logo, and they’ve been known to complain to turner about it. But turner signed a long-term extension last year, so the relationship apparently works from both sides.
I completely agree with PaulO that nascar us among the thinnest-skinned of pro sports leagues when it comes to coverage, which seems incongruous with having the most journalistically sound (all the writers are former newspaper guys) site bearing its stamp.
But as with many things in the sport, it comes down to one thing: money. And Turner apparently forks over enough cash for Daytona to swallow its pride when stories questioning its health and growth appear on a site that it would seem to control.
3 PZ // Mar 12, 2009 at 8:08 AM
Not a Nascar fan by any stretch. (F1 rocks though) but reading that my thought was, ‘hey, they are being honest and owning up to a problem’. You can’t hide half-empty tracks from TV cameras. Is it the economy? What are ticket prices like? Is the popularity declining? (probably not) There is a problem and at least they recognize it. Better than sticking their head in the sand and pretending it’s not there (MLS)
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