Denny Hamlin sounds off on concerning NASCAR TV ratings, impact of current deal

It is no secret that NASCAR has had better TV ratings than in recent weeks. Denny Hamlin believes he knows one cause. Since the NFL season started, the Cup Series has seen a serious decline in ratings that should alarm those in charge of the sport.

While TV ratings aren’t as important now as in the past, they are still a big driver of revenue. Those media companies aren’t spending $7 billion over seven years to not secure viewership.

Denny Hamlin spoke about the recent TV ratings on Actions Detrimental today. The driver was prety critical of the current media deal.

“Just not good. I don’t know. We [NASCAR] signed the deal that we signed,” Hamlin said. “We obviously lost a significant amount of network races in this TV deal. You know, in each one of the TV deals that we’ve signed over the last few years, or the past few agreements that we’ve had, we’ve always just taken the most amount of money. You know what I mean? It’s not been about what’s going to put us in the most households. You know, we were guinea pigs to get channel X off the ground, channel Y off the ground.

“You’re asking so much of your fans to just keep chasing you around all these different networks, and I know it’s not that hard. I think that, Eric Estepp, actually, when he kinda broke down what he thought the reasonings were, I agreed with him. There’s lots of things. I think that there’s, I’m very steadfast that there’s only so many sports eyeballs. People that love sports love sports. And sometimes, you’re just watching what’s on sports. When the NFL has taken such a lion’s share of those eyes right now, record-setting every single week, people just, that’s their priority. If football’s not on, I think you’ve got a legitimate shot of being the next in line. But going head-to-head, it’s just going to be a tough road.”

Then Denny Hamlin asked a bit of a rhetorical question. Why not move away from the Sunday model?

“Can I ask a question? Maybe just a theoretical and they’ll hit us up in the comments. Why not own like Friday night? Like, Friday is … I’m just, would you say anything is better than Sunday?” Hamlin asked his co-host and producer. “I’m just saying it’s not a school night. It definitely would be harder for those that travel, so you don’t want to just alienate them. Just brainstorming here, you give people time to get back home.

“They got Saturday to get back home if they do travel. I just, I don’t know, I just feel like Sunday afternoon, I just don’t know that if you built a series from scratch right now, A, you would NOT be racing 38 weeks a year. We race entirely too much; it’s over-saturated by this time of the year. If other sports just cared about money, they’d play football for 38 weekends a year, but they don’t.”

During the conversation, Denny Hamlin compared the NFL to NASCAR. There is no collective bargaining agreement ruling NASCAR. Teams and team owners do not have a say in these matters.

Considering the lawsuit going on right now, the comments about “built a series from scratch” and the comparison to the NFL are significant. Clearly, Hamlin disagrees with how NASCAR operates. That’s the whole point of the lawsuit.

Has NASCAR sold out potential audience growth for the quick dollars in the media deal? Is there any possible way to compete with the NFL at this point? It doesn’t seem there is, unless NASCAR gets creative.