When it comes to NASCAR reaching new heights of popularity, league legend Kyle Busch suggested recently that two surprising issues are slowing the racing circuit’s growth.
NASCAR is doing well for itself right now. It is the undisputed king of racing in the United States. The talent and team pool is as diverse as ever, and two years ago, the league landed a new media rights deal worth close to $8 billion.
However, this is not a peak period. To this day, the late 1990s into the early 2000s remain the period when the sport saw its greatest surge in new interest. And no period since has ever come close. Racing great Kyle Busch just missed that golden era in history and has been a part of a period where NASCAR remains popular, but has plateaued in terms of growth.
Is NASCAR giving fans a terrible in-person experience?
That is why he was asked about what the league needs to do to get to another level in a new edition of Jeff Gluck’s “12 Questions” series for The Athletic. And the 40-year-old driver offered up a pair of interesting issues NASCAR must fix first to set up another growth spurt like the one over 20 years ago.
“I just think the problem we’re running into is there are not a lot of race fans anymore,” he began by saying. “People would always bring their kids to the track, but now there are just so many other things people can do otherwise. Going to the lake, taking your kids to a bounce house.
“Who wants to sit in metal bleachers under the sun for three hours? If you’re out there — God bless you. More power to you. I appreciate that,” Busch added. “We need to do more for those people who are here and who give us their time and their money. But you’re not going to find me out there.”
Is the lack of a danger factor hurting NASCAR?
Busch’s second point may seem shocking, but it does make sense. He claims that while the measures taken by NASCAR to keep drivers safe during this century were necessary, the lack of a weekly danger factor likely has hurt interest levels for many casual NASCAR fans over the last two decades.
“We lost Dale [Earnhardt], but there was this sense [back then] of ‘What are these guys going to do next? What’s this next crash going to look like? Are they going to come out of it OK?'” Busch said. “Now it seems like everything is neutered.
“I got hurt in 2015, so I can talk, but nobody really gets hurt [now]. The safety aspect isn’t there. So there’s not this Evel Knievel type thing happening anymore,” he continued. “It’s just going to watch a race on Sunday, and people feel like that’s boring.”
