Dropping the Hammer: NASCAR Has 20 Million Fans, Apparently

The worst kept secret in NASCAR this season finally became a reality last weekend at Michigan International Speedway.

Fiat Chrysler Stellantis Dodge Ram is back, baby!

After years — nay, decades — of being teased by NASCAR executives who are terrible at teasing things that another manufacturer was just around the corner, it’s actually true now.

It just took 13 years for … Fiat Chrysler Stellantis Ram Dodge(?) to come to its senses and pick up whatever NASCAR was putting down.

Now Ram trucks will once again grace the grid of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, and eventually, Dodge says it plans to return to the NASCAR Cup Series to entertain NASCAR’s 20 million “avid” racefans each week.

Wait, hold on.

What’s wrong?

Run that back for me.

Which part?

The last paragraph.

Oh, sure. No problem.

“Now Ram trucks will once again grace the gri-“

No, not the whole thing. Just the last half.

Gotcha.

“Dodge will return to the Cup Series to entertain NASCAR’s 20 million ‘avid’ race fans each week.”

Thank you.

Don’t mention it.

Is that number accurate?

20 million?

Yeah.

I guess so.

What do you mean you guess so?

That’s the number the research department gave us.

Wait, we have a research department?

Hey, man, I’m just an intern.

Sorry, but where did they get that number?

Hmmm … a Sports Business Journal story from Sunday.

Who came up with 20 million? That’s like one-fifth of the viewership for the Super Bowl. The most people to ever watch the Daytona 500 was 19.4 million in 2006. The last time it cracked 15 million was 2013.

Again, just an intern. The number was cited by Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis, according to the story.

OK, but what was the context?

“Kuniskis said that NASCAR has 20 million avid fans, and that 50% of those, or 10 million, are truck buyers. Out of that 10 million according to Kuniskis, 20% of them, or 2 million, already are Ram customers. From that perspective, Kuniskis said that the ROI in NASCAR only makes sense for Stellantis if it’s able to grow the fanbase from 20 million to closer to 80 to 100 million, which he said he and company executives have a plan for.”

Let me get this straight.

The CEO of Ram thinks 20 million people are avid NASCAR fans and the company thinks it will be possible increase the fanbase by four or five times that?

Appears that way.

Does he know the average viewership for a Cup race on network or cable is like … 3 million?

Unknown.

Does Dodge think 17 million people are watching via dd12streams.com?

Wait a minute, has he been talking to Brian France?

Who’s that?

He … wait, what? Oh, right. Intern. I’m going to save you the burden of having all that knowledge on your shoulders. I’ll keep it as short as possible.

France was CEO and chairman of NASCAR during the sport’s peak in the 2000s, when he thought it would be best if NASCAR acted like it was every other sport and … sorry, I almost got carried away.

Anyway, during his tenure France had a number he would love to parrot when it came to how big NASCAR’s fan base was. He did it in 2004 in this NPR interview that’s no longer available and it was being used as late as 2012.

What was the number?

75 million.

….

What?

Right!?! On top of that, France would say 20 million of that number were “core” fans.

One time, my former NBC Sports colleague Dustin Long went to a France press conference. When he told me this story, Long couldn’t remember why, but he was in a foul mood that day.

So when France started citing this ridiculous fan estimates, Long decided to hold his feet to the fire about it, because you can’t let numbers like that go unchecked.

It definitely has echoes of that!

Full backstory: NASCAR once claimed 75M fans, and that 20M were "core fans." But fewer than 20M were watching the Daytona 500, so Dustin asked the very valid question, "How come all the 'core fans' don't seem to be watching the biggest race?"

— Nate Ryan (@nateryan) February 3, 2023

No sensible person believes there’s 20 million avid NASCAR fans hiding in the wood work these days.

Seriously, then how come the stands were basically half empty for the Cup race at Martinsville Speedway in March?

Intern?

Yeah?

I like you.