It’s no secret that NASCAR is a much more slimmed-down version of itself these days.
Once it was a rotund, grossly obese figure that thundered into the room with the subtlety of a herd of elephants.
The Great Recession of 2008 to 2010, however, forced NASCAR on a crash diet of sorts, alongside many others in the corporate world.
Sponsorships from corporate America were once an all-you-can-eat buffet for NASCAR. But that buffet became a salad bar—no seconds, please.
Like a kid graduating from fat camp, NASCAR emerged on the other side of the Great Recession as a much smaller, much healthier version of itself.
And a version that went from a publicly traded company to a private one, one not required to reveal much about its financial inner workings.
There have been financial glimpses, however. Peeks under the hood, to inject a pun, that show that while NASCAR is still quite healthy when it comes to sponsorships, it is still losing a bit around the middle.
A company called GlobalData makes its fortune reporting on the fortunes of others, including NASCAR.
Last year, we were given a copy of the report, The Business of NASCAR 2023, which took a magnifying glass to the financial picture of the sport.
It was a picture with pixels not from NASCAR, which would never open its ledgers and say, “Sure, here have a look.” Instead, GlobalData relied on data found elsewhere.
And while that data fed pixels that made up a decent enough picture, it certainly wasn’t one that could be considered complete.
Recently, GlobalData released The Business of NASCAR 2024, allowing a comparison between last year and this one so far.
And there are some eyebrow-raising contrasts that stand out.
Again, NASCAR (rightly so) doesn’t publicly report earnings, and to be fair, they aren’t required to.
But using available data, GlobalData reported that last year NASCAR generated $425.06 million in sponsor revenue, while this year, so far, it has generated $362.34 million—a nearly 16% drop.
