NBCSN to close at end of 2021; What does this mean for NASCAR?

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    It was announced this morning by NBCUniversal that their sport's broadcasting channel NBCSN will be permanently go off air come the end of 2021 calendar year. More importantly, what this means for NASCAR is that all of it's 2022 non network television NASCAR on NBC broadcasts will be moving to the USA Network, eliminating any guess work of which cable channel will adopt the broadcast.

As Stock Car Media learned earlier this year, NBCUniversal made plans to do away with NBCSN sometime during the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season. This left fans to ask questions like 'When will NBCSN close?' and 'Will this affect the broadcast schedule?'. These questions were valid, and NBCUniversal announced no formal date of the cable sports channel's closure, but now, with one final race left in the 2021 season, it is obvious this change by the major broadcasting company will have no effect on the current race season. 

USA Network will now, oddly enough, become home to countless hours of sports entertainment, which is out of the ordinary for the channel which is best known for it airing of popular American films. In the hopes of NBCUniversal, USA Network's rating will drastically improve, as it is likely they will host more popular entertainment in the following year. According to statistics from from ctv.kwayisi.org, which records viewership rankings and viewership numbers for cable TV channels, since 2019 USA Network's viewership has been cut by more than half. In January of 2019 the channel garnered an average of about 644,000 daily viewers, whereas at the time this article is published USA only scraped together and average 311,000 daily viewers for the week of October 24th (2021).

Those numbers stand out in stark contrast to NBC Sports Network, who according to ctv.kwayisi.org had an average of only 129,000 daily viewers within the week of October 24th 2021. Those may sound like rough numbers, when you look at their viewership in January of 2019, an average of 77,000 daily viewers, its clear to see that while to cable sports network in on the incline, they have been struggling for quite some time now. 

The NBC Sports Network (NBCSN) is available to roughly 78.879 million households, now 26 NASCAR races will be broadcasted to USA Networks 90.4 million households, a step up for the sport, and step in the right direction for NBCUniversal's reorganization.

As NBCUniversal condenses their assets and transitions to a more profitable and sustainable business model, this could mean some big changes for NASCAR's broadcasts. While the broadcasting conglomerate that is NBCUniversal is almost guaranteed to bring NASCAR to USA Network in 2022, the outlook is not so clear. Some of NBCUniversal's other networks such as "E!","CNBC", and even online streaming network "Peacock" are picking up the broadcasting rights to sports events and series that no-longer will be supported by NBCSN. That leaves the performance of America's biggest stock car racing series under intense pressure, any falter in viewership and ratings for the sport could mean NASCAR being pushed away to smaller NBC owned networks, or even to Peacock's online streaming platform.

Television contracts don't last forever, and with NBC's contract with NASCAR set to expire in 2024, only a few years away, NASCAR could very well lose NBC as a broadcaster altogether. If that does happen FOX, who shares the NASCAR broadcasting right with NBC could pick up the remainder on the 36 race season, but that would likely be a heavy task for the network to take on. In comparison to NBC, FOX's race footage and overall broadcast is something that I consider to be somewhat lacking in quality, which I can only assume means that NASCAR on FOX has less funding. I'm not alone in that realization, but I hope you can understand that this is only my opinion, and it shouldn't be taken for fact. Regardless, the sport is very lucky to have FOX behind them, even if it seems improbable that the network could pick up the entire 36 race schedule.

Even though there is obviously room for other networks to join the sports' broadcasting efforts, for unrelated reasons neither CBS or ABC are interested in NASCAR's broadcasting rights, and have expressed that on multiple occasions.

As the 2022 NASCAR network schedule was also released earlier today, we learned that 19 NASCAR Cup Series races will make it to network television, and only nine of those will take place during NBC's portion of the schedule. Here's a look at a mock-up from Fox Sports' Bob Pockrass:

Cup start times and networks for 2022: pic.twitter.com/Qi6FuSguI5

— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) November 2, 2021

 It has been very apparent throughout the past several seasons, specifically in the most recent television contracts that cable television is vital to NASCAR's survival. This shakeup for the NBCUniversal Media organization is bound to have some sort of effect on NASCAR's future as one of America's most popular motorsports divisions. With any luck this impact will be beneficial, and play into the growth of the sport. Unfortunately, the only advice I have for anyone who's made it to this point in the article is this: We'll just have to wait and see.