FOX Sports’ Mike Joy expresses concerns over future of NASCAR after ‘major dump’ – Motorsport – Sports

He added: “You couldn’t go into a supermarket without knowing about NASCAR. It was everywhere. When the sponsors stopped activating toward the general public and toward the race fans, the sport just took a giant dump in the relative to everyday life department.

“We lost a lot of that young fanbase that we really need to covet if we’re going to grow this sport again.”

Joy believes the movie ‘Talladega Nights’, which came out in 2006 and starred Will Ferrell, represented the peak of NASCAR’s popularity, which has come and gone over the years. He recalled: “That was when we hit our peak for fan engagement and crowds at the racetrack. 

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“I remember going into a Food City in Bristol, Tennessee, and you couldn’t push your cart down any aisle without knocking over a cardboard cutout of some driver hawking something. You couldn’t go in a supermarket without knowing about NASCAR. It was everywhere.”

NASCAR has been attempting to bring in a new audience for years. There is optimism for the future provided by CMO Jill Gregory’s 2020 statement that 40 percent of the sport’s viewership is women.

“One of our points of differentiation has always been the passion and loyalty of our fans. Almost 70% of them consciously support NASCAR sponsors,” Gregory said. “We also have an increasingly diverse set of fans, with the biggest growth coming from a younger audience.

“About 40% of our fanbase is women, and we’ve got the highest amount of female TV viewers per event of any U.S. sport other than the NFL. Our percentage of multicultural fans is growing, too, and that’s an effort we’ve been very deliberate about.”