As the unemployment rate drops and the economy improves, several professional sports are seeing increasing attendance numbers. There are indicators, however, that Sprint Cup races aren’t following this trend.
NASCAR changed their policy on reporting track attendance at the beginning of the 2013 season, and no longer offers estimates or sales figures. This makes it difficult to know exactly how many seats are being sold for each race, but fans and those in the sport alike have made mention of empty seats at a number of venues.
Reductions In Seating Capacity
All but two Sprint Cup tracks are owned by publicly traded companies, and therefore must make their seating capacity public. The two privately held tracks are Pocono Raceway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The others release updated capacities annually, and the trend shows many tracks have lost a drastic number of seats in recent years.
Since 2010, International Speedway Corporation has cut seats at several tracks. The company owns 12 tracks on the Sprint Cup circuit. The Daytona Rising reconstruction project will leave their flagship track with only about 101,000 seats, down from almost 150,000.
Last year Speedway Motorsports Inc. removed 41,000 seats at Charlotte Motor Speedway and more than 17,000 at Atlanta. Last week, company executives told investors they may consider removing seats from several several of their other six Sprint Cup tracks.
Role in Entertaining Millennials
Removing extra seats may seem a strange way to combat the problem with unsold tickets, but it allows race organizers to use those areas to bring more value to race fans. At Atlanta and Charlotte, SMI uses the areas where seats were removed to offer premium hospitality options for sponsors and fans. The goal at Dayton will also be to enhance the fan’s enjoyment. By sacrificing seats, these tracks can turn a race from a spectator event to an experience.
NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France has also considered ways to reach younger fans by offering a more exciting experience. One idea he recently mentioned in an Associated Press Sports Editors media briefing was shortening races in order to make them more entertaining.
“… It’s no secret that attention spans, especially with the millennial fans, are changing, and we all know that,” he said. “But what we like about it from our standpoint is it makes the actual racing event better because there’s no lull in between the beginning and the end, or there’s a lot smaller lull, so teams have to compete.”
Kansas Speedway, where the Sprint Cup teams will race next weekend, has a capacity of 74,000 since being repaved and reconfigured in 2012. Drivers will take the green flag for the SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Saturday May 9 at 7:46 p.m. eastern.