NASCAR surprisingly popular with Gen Z according to new poll data
Good news for the future of NASCAR, Gen Z is into it! While it isn’t the most popular sport among the generation, it has some legs. A new report detailing Gen Z’s social media, entertainment, and technology engagement shows promising results for American motorsport.
Morning Consult recently conducted a research project that combined the results of two surveys. The first was conducted Oct. 16-19, 2023, and featured a total of 2,207 U.S. adults, 1,0002 of whom were Gen Zers. The second survey was conducted on Nov. 2-8, 2022 with a sample of 1,000 Gen Zers.
There are some obvious results from this polling. The NFL is still king, even among Gen Z. 54% of those surveyed confirmed they were “casual” or “avid” fans of the league. The second with 50%, was the NBA.
Just one percentage point below college basketball is NASCAR. 36% of respondents replied they were casual or avid fans of NASCAR, putting it above the UFC, NHL, and Formula One among American Gen Zers.
Before anyone gets upset about Esports being in fifth overall, get used to it. Also, that isn’t bad news for NASCAR as they lean further into iRacing and promoting sim racing. I’d take this as a big win for the sport and something that should excite current fans.
NASCAR and Gen Z – they aren’t giving up on it yet.
While polling data can be off, margins of error exist and the polls used in this research have an unweighted margin of error of +/- 3.0%. In other words, NASCAR could be as high as 39% or as low as 33% among Gen Z as a whole.
If you told NASCAR executives more than a third of Gen Z are fans of the sport, I think they’d happily take that.
Gen Z cannot be measured by TV ratings
So, if Gen Z is tuning in and following the sport, why doesn’t it show in TV ratings? Well, there is a good reason for that. The research from Morning Consult explains that in part. There just isn’t a great way to measure how they take in sports and other entertainment because they are always online.
About 80% of Gen Z uses YouTube as their main social media platform. After that, it goes to Instagram and TikTok. That doesn’t even take into account shady streaming sites that many use to watch all of the sports that they want.
As a 26-year-old, I consider myself a Gen Z elder, a bridge between the end of the millennials and the start of Z. Anecdotally, this research makes sense to me. Since Ross Chastain’s Hail Melon in 2022, I’ve had friends bring up NASCAR to me unlike they have before. A few have even started to go in person to races.
The best way for NASCAR to get Gen Z to keep tuning in and to raise that number, the in-person experience. Truly, once you’ve been to a NASCAR event, it’s hard to shake it. The energy, passion, noise, and the power of the cars – it is primal in a way and it will convince even the most skeptical that this sport is great.