Canadian Politics Today

For odd reasons, I became a NASCAR fan almost 20 years ago.  Oddly, that makes me an 'old school' fan even.  As such, I can comment that NASCAR's leadership has utterly destroyed their sport by fiddling with it.  The NHL has also fiddled, but nowhere near as badly.

Here is something that even a non-race-fan could read and scratch their heads over: a race is now STOPPED 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through to create little mini-races within the race called 'stages'.  There are bonus points for that.  Oh, also they tried to increase interest at the end of the season (November, not NASCAR weather) by creating the "Chase", which were effectively playoffs.  Only the top 10 racers for the last 10 races would have a chance to with the season championship.  Then they fiddled with that, adding wild cards, then making it twelve  Oh and they changed the points system they had for 50 years.  And they changed the car. 

You can now see empty stands, and some tracks have removed stands so it doesn't look so bad on TV.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/17/more-than-a-kneeling-nascars-tv-ratings-decline-is-as-worrying-as-the-nfls-why

The article makes a good case for cutting off the oversupply of content in these sports:

that means cutting tens of hours of race broadcasts down to the best three hours. It means starving people, and then feed them. It means throw the fat online, and see how much they’ll pay for it. In fact, Nascar could just dump it all on Netflix – which, according to one study, is responsible for half the decline of TV viewership alone.

Of course, Netflix doesn't have live streaming (in Canada at least) and I suspect the older viewers have no idea what Netflix is.  There will be pain in NFL and NASCAR offices before things get better...

I find NFL games far too long. A 60 minute game takes and average of three hours. Even with the extra intermissions and all the TV time outs, the average NHL and NBA game take less than two and a half. Still too long IMO when you consider a 90 minute soccer or 80 minute rugby game takes around two hours.

Balancing costs, innovation and competitiveness is a major problem for all types of motor racing but NASCAR has gone stupid. Its cookie cutter cars and manipulation of the rules in an effort to provide photo finishes after 100's of miles has gone beyond the ridiculous. I'd been losing interest for years but the last straw for me was the  "mandatory caution" every 20 minutes to back up the field so the leaders don't get too far ahead. You can't take that kind of "racing" seriously and I haven't watched at all since.

But not of me.  Nice.

But not of me.  Nice.

You like other weird stuff too, so it wasn’t unexpected.
 

You like other weird stuff too, so it wasn’t unexpected.
 

Now I feel good about myself.  Happy Birthday to ME.

There was a black driver, and a Japanese one, and Danica Patrick who is leaving this year.

Well it sounds like they got all their diversity boxes checked, then.  Good job, NASCAR!

 -k

You racist **** !