Mike Bianchi: To reconnect with his dwindling fan base, NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France must become a man of the people.
If you’re out there, Brian France, do something. If you still care, do something. Rescue your sport. Save it for these wonderfully loyal fans in the infield at Daytona International Speedway who still love and adore NASCAR more than anything, who have spent their hard-earned money to camp out in the infield for a week just like they do every year for the Coke Zero Sugar 400.
“Brian France? I don’t know who that is,” says Lainey Williams, who is sitting in a plastic kiddie pool with three of her friends from Gainesville as they try to stay cool in the blistering heat before the start of Saturday night’s race.
Strangely, none of the other people in the pool know that France is the CEO and chairman of NASCAR and has been for more than a decade. Even so, they wouldn’t mind talking to him about the future of the sport.
“Tell him we’ll be right here,” says Wesley Thomas, sunning his
bare chest and sipping a cool brew. “We’ve got hot dogs, beer and plenty of room in the pool.”
Maybe if France would come out of hiding and actually talk to the fans, his sport wouldn’t be in the shape it’s in. Fans and media members you talk to can’t remember the last time NASCAR’s boss came down from his luxury suite and actually graced the masses with his presence.
Isn’t it amazing that a sport founded by France’s grandfather, Bill France Sr., on the precept of building a relationship with grassroots fans is now run by a man who has no connection whatsoever with NASCAR’s shrinking fan base. Bill France Sr. and Bill France Jr. both lived right here in Daytona, the birthplace of NASCAR, while Brian supposedly spends most of his time in New York and is rarely visible to fans, media or even his own employees.
Can you imagine commissioners in other sports almost never making public comments? NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, for as much criticism as he gets, at least stands up at a podium regularly and explains himself to his fan base. Goodell, NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred are all over the media — on ESPN, Fox Sports and national radio shows — pumping up their product, explaining their decisions, communicating with their fans.
If any sport needs a strong leader now, it is NASCAR, which alarmingly has lost more than half of its attendance and TV ratings in the last decade. A startling example of how bad it’s gotten came from the most recent telecast of the Geico 500 in Talladega — one of NASCAR’s most famous and prestigious tracks — where TV ratings have plunged 30 percent in just two years.
An argument broke out earlier this week in Daytona when John Saunders, president of the International Speedway Corporation’s track ownership group, matter-offactly blamed attendance woes at NASCAR tracks on the failure of the new crop of young drivers.
“We still have an issue with star power, and hopefully this stable of young drivers coming along will start to win and build their brands,” Saunders said.
The young drivers were quick to fire back. Bubba Wallace acknowledged that drivers deserve some of the criticism but added that outdated tracks have failed to keep up with some of the modernized state-of-the-art venues in other major sports.
“There is a lot of boring stuff that we still have at ISC tracks that we could update to get more fans out,” Wallace said.
“Honestly, this whole ‘young guys need to win now’ thing is getting old,” 24-year-old driver Ryan Blaney said.
Not only is it getting old, it’s completely wrong. For NASCAR track owners to blame the sport’s problems on the young drivers is proof positive that NASCAR leadership has its collective head buried in wet asphalt. It’s not like the massive plunge in attendance, TV ratings and corporate sponsors is a recent phenomenon. It’s been happening for years, even when marquee drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart were still competing.
What do the young drivers have to do with Lowe’s dropping its sponsorship of Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time champion and one of the greatest drivers of all time?
“As bummed as I am to see things slipping for NASCAR, when I look around at all the other pro sports entities out there, everybody is going through it,” Johnson said. “Fans are just consuming things differently.”
Said defending Coke Zero champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: “It’s not the fault of the young drivers that the sport is where it is. It’s a product of people’s attention spans and the way society is today.”
Who knows if NASCAR is even fixable? Maybe the sport, as Stenhouse suggested, is just a victim of the times. Maybe it’s just a matter of NASCAR’s season being too long, the races being too long and our attention spans being too short.
But it sure would be nice if there was somebody in charge of racing who wasn’t asleep at the wheel. Wake up, Brian France. Wake up and come on down to the infield of this magnificent track your grandfather built.
There are hot dogs and beer and a spot in the pool among a bunch of fans who don’t know who the hell you are or where the hell you’ve been.