“Somebody has to lose”: Kelley Earnhardt on NASCAR’s big hurdle of going back to the good old days

Kelley Earnhardt recently spoke about what it would take for NASCAR to go back to its prime and grow. It's no secret that over the last few years, the sport has seen a decline, losing a foothold in the American sports landscape.

From a TV ratings perspective, the 2002 Daytona 500 got a 10.9 rating on NBC. In 2006, that number reached a peak at 11.3 when Jimmie Johnson won the Great American Race. However, when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the Daytona 500 last year, the rating was 4.4 on Fox.

But despite things being what they are, Kelley Earnhardt proclaimed NASCAR as a sport "rocks." She said that racing feeds her soul above everything else and that NASCAR is "a bada** sport." Earnhardt added that the fans can't get enough of it, and they're showing up every week.

But for NASCAR to get to the level of a league like the NFL, they need to straighten out their economics and some would have to make sacrifices.

"Economics matter and they gotta get the economics right. That's the problem. So your NFL and your MLBs and this is the problem that we have as NASCAR. We were the Junior Johnsons and the Bud Moores of the world, and we want to be John Henry of the Red Sox. But what it takes to get there is going to be painful for somebody because you can't just flip the switch. Because we have too many constituents. We have race teams that have infrastructure constituents and investments, we have NASCAR that has all those things, we have drivers. Somebody has to lose to get to be the John Henry of NASCAR for us to become like other sports. And that's the goal," Earnhardt said. [1:16:25]

Kelley Earnhardt mentioned that's what RTA is fighting for, and that's what Denny Hamlin is fighting for.

She added that it simply won't work for all the 36 teams in the garage because "someone's going to lose."

NASCAR listened to Denny Hamlin's idea that could increase TV Ratings

During an episode of Actions Detrimental in 2023, Denny Hamlin proposed a mid-season 32 driver tournament that could boost the sport's ratings between mid-June to mid-July.

This idea birthed Denny Hamlin's Bracket Challenge, which turned out to be a huge success, with nearly 70,000 brackets filled as per Hamlin.

But Hamlin's Bracket Challenge led to NASCAR's in-season tournament, which was announced earlier this year. The winner of the tournament would get $1 million and it's all set to come into play from next year.

Hamlin believed that NASCAR's in-season tournament would attract a lot of interest from in and out of the sport. As per the JGR driver, the tournament would be full of positives on all fronts for the sport, as it would lead to more storylines.

As for whether the in-season tournament brings more eyes to the sport and shoots up the TV ratings, that is something time will tell.