I wondered when Chase Elliott was injured prior to the Las Vegas race weekend on how much of an affect that this injury would have on the TV ratings. Elliott is the face of the sport. With knowing that he’d be out for the foreseeable future, how many fans of this fan base would tune out until he’s back?

While we don’t know for certain how much of an affect he had on the ratings in the races he missed, the stats say it could have played a pretty large role.

He was listed as out for Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta, COTA, Richmond and Bristol Dirt. Those ratings tumbled. Vegas was down 12%. Phoenix dropped 15% from last year. Atlanta dropped 15%, COTA fell 16%, Richmond 42% and Bristol Dirt 14%.

Then Elliott came back. In his first race back in Martinsville, ratings went up 11% from last year’s number. Last week in Talladega, went up 5% again. How much of this is tied to Elliott?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Is it all tied to him? I also don’t think so either.

The Daytona 500 was down almost 8% in viewership, a week later in Fontana, it was down 5.6%. So those races that he was in still went down earlier in the year.

Also, part of that Martinsville number was due to the fact that the race in 2022 was on primetime on FS1. This year was on Sunday afternoon.

Talladega could have been attributed to the fact that the off-track drama had stopped. We weren’t talking injuries, penalties or the appeals process. We stuck to the racing and low and behold, the number increased in a positive manner.

Still, there’s no doubt that Elliott played a role. I mean how could he not. He’s the five-time defending Most Popular Driver recipient. The problem however is the fact that one driver has such a control on the TV market for the sport. It shows a glaring area in NASCAR to where growth is needed.

They need more than one star to help this thing grow further. That’s part of the reason that stunts their growth in the fact that they have just one face of the sport. They need at least a few more.