I said it right when the controversy started happening surrounding Bubba Wallace's BLM stuff and the banning of the Confederate flag at events: This might be, at least in part, a PR stunt that NASCAR is embracing for the sake of ratings.
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I also felt like the "noose" found in the garage, right when it happened, might have been a staged event not just on the part of Bubba, but on the part of the racing organization as a whole in order to draw free publicity to the sport that only a very small portion of the population pays attention to. Say what you will about attendance, because there is no denying that there are MASSIVE turnouts for these racing events (just look at the size of their stadiums) but overall, NASCAR pales in comparison to both other televised sports as well as other racing sports that exist around the globe.
All of a sudden, a sport that anyone outside of their very dedicated fanbase barely paid attention to and would quickly skip past in the news, was at the forefront for reasons completely unrelated to the actual sport. People who never thought about NASCAR decided to give it a look.
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I noticed the other day when I went to Fox Sports website that their links section had the usual major sports for quick access and now there is a NASCAR button as well. This link used to be hidden in a sub-menu of "motorsports."
I don't meant to be a conspiracy theorist but as soon as this news hit the shelves I was already saying that NASCAR is going to milk this for all that they can. As they say; "Any publicity is good publicity."
Now I don't exactly know what "Out of Home" viewers means, I presume it means in public places such as bars, restaurants, and airports but NASCAR beat all other sporting events in this demographic in the past week. In some cases it was by a very substantial amount as well.
I still don't care about NASCAR and i would be willing to bet that there are still very few people (other than long-term fans) that are going to start becoming new fans that are truly interested in this sport but it is difficult to argue with the effectiveness of their accidental / intentional publicity that has been generated by the Bubba Wallace stuff in the past 6 weeks.
TV ratings have been slipping for all sports for years and a lot of this can be attributed to streaming services and also "on demand" services that allows consumers to completely bypass advertising so any claims that NASCAR's rating are way down (which is what many pundits like to say) is true across all sports.
I think that this could be a bad sign actually because if this indeed was an intentional controversy created for free media attention, we can probably expect to see more and more of this in many other sports. I suppose one could argue that it is already happening since all sports seems to be mired in some sort of controversy, mostly racially-oriented at the moment - but NASCAR really took the ball and ran with it on this one.
I have to admit that I did in fact click on the NASCAR link to see how Bubba was doing in the overall running and as it turns out, he's doing pretty well as he currently sits in 9th place overall.
Fantastic! I'm still not going to watch it though :P
controversial happenings attract eyes! Just ask Smollette or whatever his name is.
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