Ratings for Mint 400 on NBC 7/12

The Martelli Bros. produced Mint 400 race has now become an annual TV production on NBC.  Its not quite as good (OK, not nearly as good) as watching the event live but it sure beats bass fishing or Bar Rescue reruns.

This year the event which was broadcast on Sunday 7/12 for a total of two action packed hours grabbed a 0.5 rating.  So approximately 0.5% of all the 115.6 million TV households in the country were tuned into the race--though this 115.6 number is an old one from the '13-'14 TV season, the number of TV households in the US likely went up between '13-'14 and '14-'15 so this figure is underestimated if anything.

Based on this year old estimate of US TV households, there were some 578,000 TV owning households tuned into the event.  Figuring 1.1 viewers per household that would put some 636,000 pairs of eyeballs on the 2015 Mint 400.

For comparison, the TV show that came on following the Mint was a broadcast regarding Pastrana's Nitro Circus and grabbed a 0.6 rating.  At the same time over on Fox you had the women's US Open golf tournament which had a 0.7 rating

Of note is that last year's Mint 400 race had a 0.4 rating meaning that '15's ratings were a 25% increase.  Hard to attribute ratings increases in such a small sample size to much but at least it is moving in the right direction.

Weekend Offroad Sports Stats....

Adding to my ongoing reference of major broadcast TV ratings for various offroad racing events I think I'm going to try and begin referencing recent offroad racing events (primarily desert racing and stage rally) and look at some key items such as entry lists, entry costs, length of race, $ per racing mile cost and what, if any, major media coverage was present or forthcoming.

The first of these comes from this past weekend when you had both Rally America and NASA Rally with smaller, regional style events and you had the season ending BITD Henderson 250 out in Nevada.  All were geographically distinct enough not to draw competitors from one another, though at least one Show Me Rally competitor had originally entered the Rally Florida event before switching events.

The Show Me Rally saw a fair amount of change over its comparable '13 event.  Moving to a later date, changing locations and name, new roads and more still saw similar entry numbers to last year, while overall stage mileage and a $100 increase in entry fees (in all cases entry fees are based upon the LOWEST possible fee at each event) were also present.

The NASA event was the new Rally Florida down at the flatland of the FIRM and drew 15 entries (nearly half of which DNF'd which I found surprising given the assumed lack of major trees and rocks there!)  at 60 stage miles in length this was a full single day event and hopefully sets the stage (pun intended) for the FIRM to host a full points paying event in '15 as stated on the facilities website.  I just hope that FL isn't too far away from the majority of Rally drivers in the US and can draw a higher entry count...still, the $5400 minimum in entry fees (likely significantly higher as certainly not all entries here were of the "early" variety and thus qualifying for the lowest fee) is on par with what the Perryville Farm and Forest Rally brought in the year before and should bode well for the continuation of this race.

Lastly there is the Henderson 250.  The desert event saw UTVs move into the same race as the more limited cars, trucks and buggies vs. being thrown in with the bikes and quads as they were in previous years.  Regardless, the entry numbers for the more limited racers appear to have declined from '13.  Without access to the supplemental forms from '13 I can't determine if there has been a price increase that might have caused this.  Moving forward we'll try and track race to race and year to year trends for the various series.  At $600 a pop for the more limited classes you have about $33K in income for BITD from just the two lap (each of 80 miles) classes.



If you have any recommendations as to other simple info items to add to this breakdown or other feedback I'd love to hear it as I'm not racing the overwhelming majority of these events and don't know what info might be most useful to racers/participants.


Rally America:
Show Me Rally 2014--22 entries, $350, 47 Stage miles in length, No TV or Internet coverage, $7.5 per mile

(somewhat comparable event with similar organizers, location, sanctioning)  Perryville Farm and Forest Rally--23 entries, $250, 36 Stage miles in length, $6.9 per mile




NASA Rally:

Rally Florida at the FIRM--15 entries, $360, 60 Stage miles in length, Spike Channel's Offroad Extreme program was there filming the race for an upcoming broadcast, $6 per mile

(no comparable historical event, new event for 2014)




BITD Desert Race:
Henderson 250--$600, 55 entries in the classes running two laps, 160 Race course miles in total length, Broadcast on MavTV on 1/19/15 at 9:30PM Pacific, $3.8 per mile

2013 Henderson 250--61 entries in the classes running two laps

Much of the drop in the limited class entries is attributed to the competition of a MORE Toys For Tots desert race in Barstow, CA this same weekend and drew 70 entries itself--though this occurred in '13 as well when there were 54 entries at the MORE Holiday 200.

So if anything, you might say that there was a shift in the limited classes AWAY from BITD and TOWARDS the MORE series event.  In 2014 it appears that the limited class racers PREFERRED to run the MORE event vs. the BITD race.  In all however it was a net gain for the limited classes between these two events with 115 entries of this type in '13 between the two events and 125 entries in '14, an increase of near 9%.

A Nissan Frontier Returning to the Baja 1000 Next Weekend!

At least it currently looks that way!

 Los Angeles resident Glen Tanizawa has had this race in mind for a number of years now and has been transforming his Frontier into a SCORE compliant racer over the course of at least the past year with a significant amount of the work (of course) taking place in the last few months, weeks and days.

Glen and I have talked a bit back and forth with him being particularly interested in my efforts to race down the Baja peninsula earlier this year in my Nissan Frontier during the NORRA 1000.  Both the NORRA 1000 that I raced in and this year's Baja 1000 ran the entire length of the peninsula though the B1K is an whole order of difficulty greater than the NORRA event.

Unlike the NORRA 1000 there is zero downtime in the race.  We at least had each evening to try and make repairs and recover...not so in the B1K.  Glenn and his crew will have to go non-stop for likely close to 48 hours if they hope to finish.  They will also be taking on a course significantly more difficult that what I encountered--bigger rocks, deeper silt, steeper inclines, etc. and will have much fewer "transit" sections that we had in the NORRA event where we covered at least some of the mileage on pavement.

It is a HUGE undertaking, one that defies my imagination even having gotten a taste of what Baja racing entails earlier this year.  If you want to follow along with Glenn you can certainly go to his personal Facebook page and "friend" him to get updates before the race.  The race begins on 11/13 with the motorcycles off the line at 6AM local time and cars/trucks beginning at 12:30PM local time.  Running in the Sportsman 2000 class under #2003, Glenn should be starting darn near the very last of the vehicles to race, probably not until close to 3PM.  It has been years since a Nissan vehicle has even entered a SCORE event, let alone finish a B1K (I believe Bob Graham and his Nissan Titan was the last Nissan vehicle to finish a SCORE event back in '07) and I wish Glenn the best of luck.

If I have any advice coming out of my experiences?  Go slow.  Real slow.  As slow as you think you're going??  Go slower.  Stock or near stock vehicle components are just not meant to endure that terrain for any length of time.  You will get lulled into thinking you can go faster than is actually smart and you will be hauling ass down a fire road like course at 80 mph or better and then you'll run right into a minefield of rocks, ruts and ditches while your adrenalin is still coursing from driving with your hair ablaze...Knowing how to flick that switch between the two types of driving is huge.

Regardless, what you find here in photos are some of the build and development photos of Glenn's Frontier.  Enjoy and drop Glenn a line if you can.  I'm sure he could use the pat on the back and encouragement.

Down Weekend for Offroad Motorsports on Network TV...

Well, that's not progress...

Global Rallycross has not generated any appreciable growth over the course of '14 and has actually regressed in terms of ratings over the past two events and LOORRS has continued its regular broadcasts on CBS but its ratings have stayed flat to marginally down over the past two years.

Now I'm not on the inside of the companies paying for these events to be broadcast on Network TV so in truth I really have NO IDEA whether perhaps even at the current ratings levels that their producers are happy.  It is certainly a possibility that NBC and CBS sell their airtime to Lucas and GRC at a low enough level that they can sell their advertising spots at a rate for them to turn a profit...maybe.

What I can tell you is that I've been tracking these ratings on a general basis for a number of years now, dating back to the old CORR days.  While its been great to see offroad motorsports (primarily short course) appear on network TV on a regular basis over the past few years, the ratings generated from it have not moved.  We now regularly see short course, Baja events, rallycross, stage rally, motocross, Best in the Desert and more on Network and near network (see NBCSN, CBS Sports, etc.) sources yet the broadcasts most accessible to the America public (the over the air broadcasts) have stagnated in terms of ratings/viewers.  There is a core audience here and these broadcasts are reaching this audience but they aren't bringing in a growing audience of viewers.  You can debate the reasons but the facts by now are fairly clear.

There is a lot to be said for the inconsistency and "random" nature of these broadcasts.  If you are a NASCAR fan you KNOW that pretty much every weekend there is a race (which is often EVERY weekend) you can sit down around 1PM Eastern and catch the race.  If you are a football fan (college or NFL) you KNOW that every Saturday or Sunday the games will be on during the season.  For offroad motorsports??  Well, there you can look up the schedule on any one of a dozen or more websites for the various series and see if the event is shown on a Saturday or a Sunday, early afternoon, late afternoon or if it will be another month before another broadcast is available (often the case), is it on CBS?  CBS Sports?  MavTV?  Do I get MavTV?.  This is just the nature of the beast with offroad racing at this point.  Its not NASCAR with live events taking place every weekend at the same time on the same channel and thus it has an uphill battle to to fight just in terms of getting casual viewers to watch.

For this past weekend, GRC saw a 0.3 rating on NBC which tied for the weekend's lowest rated sporting event on Network TV with the LOORRS which it faced off directly against in the same time slot over on CBS from 2-3PM Eastern.  Perhaps you could make the argument that either show's ratings would have been higher if they hadn't been facing off against one another and instead were competing for viewers against say...gymnastics or golf or the like.  Certainly I've made a case here before of combining the audiences of offroad motorsports that are shown at the same time, so I'll do so here again for the sake of positivity.  During this time period there was a combined 0.6 rating for offroad motorsports on Network TV equating to some 694,000 households and 763,000 people watching offroad racing of some kind during this period.  Now this doesn't help the advertisers who paid only to be on one broadcast or the other and got their message in front of "only" about 350,000 households and 382,000 people during this time.

The NBC broadcast of the Red Bull Hare Scramble which followed the GRC broadcast beat out both of the "car" oriented race shows with a 0.4 rating grabbing about 460,000 households and 510,000 viewers.  This holds true to another long term trend that I've noticed--whether its motocross, supercross or various Red Bull motorcycle events, they do usually out-rate the offroad "car" racing.  I would have a tendency to attribute that to the larger fan/participation rate of motorcycle racing.  While an extreme minority of people have ever driven in a SCORE, BITD, or Rally event of any kind you can show up in nearly any geographic region in the country on any weekend and find a number of motocross tracks, hare scrambles, trail rides, etc.  The sheer participation rate of offroad motorcycle riders dwarfs that of any combination of desert/shortcourse/rally drivers by what has to be many magnitudes and thus its a lot easier to find an individual who is familiar with jumping their motorcycle through the woods or over a tabletop, flipping through the channels and staying with one of these shows than it is short course, desert or rally.  That said, these motorcycle event ratings are never MASSIVELY better than these other offroad broadcasts...just marginally better...

TELECAST	DATE	NET	TIME (ET)	RATING
"World of X Games: Women of Action"	7/26	ABC	3:00-4:00pm	0.3
"ESPN Sports Saturday"	7/26	ABC	4:00-6:00pm	0.5
Lucas Oil Off Road Racing	7/26	CBS	2:00-3:00pm	0.3
PGA Tour: RBC Canadian Open: Third Round	7/26	CBS	3:00-6:00pm	0.4
Guinness Int'l Champions Cup: Manchester United-AS Roma	7/26	Fox	4:00-6:00pm	0.5
"UFC on Fox 12": Prelims	7/26	Fox	6:00-8:00pm	0.8
"UFC on Fox 12": Robbie Lawler-Matt Brown	7/26	Fox	8:00-10:00pm	1.6
Global Rallycross	7/26	NBC	2:00-3:00pm	0.3
Red Bull Hare Scramble	7/26	NBC	3:00-4:30pm	0.4
Asics World Series Of Beach Volleyball	7/26	NBC	4:30-6:00pm	0.5
"Road to the PGA Championship"	7/27	CBS	2:00-3:00pm	0.5
PGA Tour: RBC Canadian Open: Final Round	7/27	CBS	3:00-6:00pm	1.8
Tour de France review show	7/27	NBC	2:00-3:30pm	0.4
Asics World Series Of Beach Volleyball	7/27	NBC	3:30-5:00pm	0.6
Breeders' Cup Challenge Series: Haskell Invitational	7/27	NBC	5:00-6:00pm	0.8