Perception is all

Five million lost viewers.

Thirteen years.

This is not the sort of calculus that works, if you're a once-going concern that wants to remain a going concern. This is, in fact, as bad as it gets when the once-going concern is the most wildly successful motorsports entity in American history, a motorsports entity that once gushed money with such ease it briefly imagined itself the nation's fourth major sport.

That was then. This is now.

This is post-NASCAR NASCAR, the bust after the boom. In 2005, nearly 8.5 million people watched each Cup Series race, according to the latest figures. In 2018 fewer than 3.5 million did. This means almost twice as many people have stopped watching NASCAR across the last 13 years than watched it this year.

This was would be awful news for any professional; for a motorsport like NASCAR, which relies heavily on sponsorship dollars for its very breath, it is catastrophic.

Eyeballs attract sponsors. Lack of same sends them screaming into the night. That is not a good thing.

So why is this happening?

At least part of it, one senses, is that NASCAR is experiencing exactly what IndyCar did in the early '90s, when so many reliable draws retired almost at once. Within a three or four year span, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Rick Mears and Al Unser Sr. all hung it up. Every one of them represented a chunky fan base. At least a portion of those fan bases never caught on with the next generation of stars, none of whom shone with nearly the sustained brilliance.

NASCAR, same deal. Four of the biggest draws in the sport -- Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Carl Edwards -- have all walked away from the sport in the last four years. A fifth, Jimmie Johnson, has become a diminished presence. The next generation of sustainable draws is still in the development stage, and a few of the established remaining veterans aren't particularly likeable.

So NASCAR is stuck in neutral, for the time being. And as has been pointed out in this space before, a lot of that is its own doing.

All that aforementioned wild success, you see, created expectations that were unrealistic and unsustainable. This was especially true among sponsors and potential sponsors, who saw that gusher of money and assumed it would gush forever. It was never going to -- anyone who understood that motorsports is and always will remain a niche entity could see that -- but booms are hothouses for delusion. If the money's rolling in, it's always going to roll in. Right?

Well ... no. And so we've come to a place where 3 million plus viewers for every Cup race is a catastrophe because of the backdrop against which it's playing out. Thirty, 40 years ago, when NASCAR was still largely a regional phenomenon, 3 million plus viewers would have had everyone in the sport turning cartwheels. And sponsors would have been lined up out the door.

Now?

Now it's sending them fleeing out the door.

What a difference perception makes.