While labor negotiations appear to be frought with tension in the WNBA and MLB, no sport may be more divided at the moment than NASCAR.
America’s most popular racing series still has ratings that other sports except for pro and college football would give anything for on a weekly basis. But it has declined substantially from its peak in the mid-2000s. And it seems like everything in the sport is currently ripe for polarizing debate.
Should the series do more or less road courses? Should NASCAR market towards a nationwide casual audience, or return to its regional, blue-collar roots? Is the racing entertaining enough? If those questions aren’t enough, two teams including the one part-owned by Michael Jordan are suing NASCAR in federal court over their charter system.
But nothing is sweeping over the sport like the debate over the NASCAR playoff format that is seeing increasing opposition rise up.
Most every other major racing series in the world decides its champion via a season long points format. And so did NASCAR, at least until 2004 when the first “Chase” was implemented. As a perceived solution to increase excitement and interest, NASCAR moved to a playoff system where the Top 10 drivers qualified for a 10-race championship chase. In 2014, the series moved to an elimination model with a 16 driver field that culminates in the last four drivers competing in a winner-takes-all one race shootout.
The playoffs have always been polarizing, but the debate has reached a fever pitch in the last year. Joey Logano won the 2024 championship even though he would have been 11th in points in a season long format. It’s also seen a number of drivers qualify for the playoffs through single race wins in spite of being well off the pace for most of the season. Harrison Burton made it into last year’s playoffs thanks to a shock win at Daytona and only scored two Top 10s all season long.
Fans are also clamoring for change on social media, where posts reflecting what a season long points championship would look like following each race draw a large audience.
Former driver Mark Martin has been leading the charge for a return to the old format, arguing that the majority of NASCAR fans want the change back to a season-long format.
Part of it is nostalgia, of course. NASCAR was hotter 20 years ago. We all want things to be the way they were to make us feel warm and fuzzy and comfortable. And there’s probably some cultural dynamics at play too with everything else going on in our world. Street racing in San Diego and Chicago isn’t exactly the same legacy as Junior Johnson running moonshine.
At The Athletic, NASCAR ace reporter Jeff Gluck has a deep dive into the debate going on in the sport, with their playoff committee evenly divided but support certainly there to make some kind of change. But Gluck says that the sport is waiting for arguably the voice with the biggest impact to make its feelings known.
NBC.
As the network that owns the television rights to the last third of the NASCAR schedule, NBC will have a huge influence in whatever decision the sport makes. But they’re not ready to show their hand just yet according to Gluck, and that is delaying any change from taking place.
Though it’s unclear what NBC wants, going away from playoffs and eliminations is likely not on the list. Eliminations give something for TV to promote, and flashing the live points in the final laps of an elimination race is a powerful draw to retain viewers.
Certainly, an argument can be made that NBC has too much power in this conversation, and that the broadcast partner shouldn’t be dictating how a sport’s championship is decided. Then again, NASCAR’s four Cup Series TV partners are paying a combined $1.1 billion per year over the next seven years, and executives don’t feel comfortable changing the very thing NBC signed up to televise without giving the network a chance to weigh in.
So despite a process that has stretched more than six months and was filled with optimism through the early summer, the committee now finds itself in a similar position as everyone else who cares about NASCAR as much as its members do: Playing a game of wait-and-see to learn what TV executives believe are realistic changes that can be made, and even then, perhaps not until 2027.
NBC has the most to lose with any format change to the sport. NASCAR is always going to be swimming upstream when the stretch run of its season has to go up against football. That’s why the PGA Tour has pushed back its season so that the Tour Championship ends the FedEx Cup in August.
But the playoff format was instituted in part to make better television. It’s much harder, especially in this day and age, for NBC to sell races to fans if there is little to no championship drama in the final races. The playoff stakes of win-and-in was also meant to make every race in the season matter, largely for television and entertainment purposes.
Every rule change NASCAR has made in the last 25 years has been to make the product more palatable for television and casual fans whether it be overtime finishes, stage breaks, or the playoff format. But maybe the pendulum has swung too far and that the championship doesn’t mean what it once did, delegitimizing the whole endeavor. And maybe those changes just have not been successful and it’s time to admit the truth.
With so many fans and important voices in the sport expressing skepticism over the playoff format, NASCAR has to do some soul searching and ask if it’s now doing more harm than good. But NBC and its television partners have 7.7 billion reasons to have some input on where the racing series goes next. And for now, everyone involved is playing the waiting game to see what they have to say.
About Matt Yoder