The Decline of NASCAR, What Happened?

It’s pretty crazy how certain trends can be the biggest thing one day and nothing the next. One of the most confusing quick declines is that of NASCAR. As the calendar rounded the 90s into the 2000s, NASCAR became one of the hottest tickets in all of sports. There were even talks that it might’ve burst its way into the mainstream to compete with other sports like the NFL.

However, we fast forward to 2019 and the brand is really struggling. We can’t say that they’re hanging on by a thread but we aren’t necessarily looking at the future positively here.

So how exactly could one of the biggest powerhouses in sports take such a sharp decline in such a hurry? Unfortunately for NASCAR, there are a variety of factors that play into this. There’s no one magical fix that will take that train and put it back on the rails once again. Instead, due to a variety of factors, many of them out of NASCAR’s control, the brand has really been sent spiraling.

Down in the video below, we get a unique and comprehensive breakdown of what’s been happening with the sport. It all seems to have stemmed around the time that Dale Earnhardt passed away at the Daytona 500 in 2001. Not only was Dale the sport’s most prominent figure but his death would precede a series of events that would spell out disaster for the sport.

Even after NASCAR had recovered from losing its biggest star, different measures have been put in place to make sure that the entertainment factor had been drained out. This wasn’t just immediately following Dale’s death, either. A series of bad decisions really landed NASCAR in a place where they don’t want to be.

Hopefully, the future is bright for NASCAR. I would love to be writing an article a couple of years from now talking about how exactly they hit their groove and recovered from this rut. For now, though, we’re talking all about the decline of the sport.