Could higher Clash TV ratings mean a rebound for NASCAR overall in 2018?

The TV numbers for the Clash at Daytona don’t necessarily mean the sport’s rating decline is over, but if they do, that would be a welcome development.

NASCAR fans are conditioned by now to expect bad news when it comes to the sport’s TV ratings. Down year over year, continuing a five or even 10-year overall downward trend is the most likely thing you’ll read when the numbers come in after a race weekend. They’re still generally solid, especially when the NFL is not in season, but they’re generally nothing but reminders that maybe fewer people really do care about stock car racing with each new season.

Then again, sports tend to be cylical, and ratings don’t always keep trending in one direction forever. For the Clash at Daytona, there was good news on the TV front.

According to Adam Stern of SportsBusiness Journal, ratings for the Clash on FS1 showed a healthy increase compared to 2017:

Now this news comes with a healthy and necessary grain of salt. Last year, the Clash was supposed to run on a Saturday, but rain postponed it to Sunday. Races run on anything but their advertised dates almost always show drop-offs in their TV numbers. The 2017 Clash also came a week later in the calendar year, making it even less of an apples to apples comparison.

Still, NASCAR is at the point now where any good news is a cause for celebration in terms of its TV ratings. That’s even more true when you consider that the expected effect of the retirement of Dale Earnhardt Jr. (and to a much lesser extent, Danica Patrick) would be less people watching.

But the sport is also at a point where maybe there’s just enough intrigue to pick it up at the beginning of the 2018 season. Is Martin Truex Jr. here to stay as the top dog in NASCAR? Will Chase, Elliott, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney or another one of the young guns take their next step up and challenge for the championship? Is Alex Bowman, Junior’s replacement and Daytona 500 pole-sitter, for real?

It’s not hard to imagine that taken as a group, those factors might convince some lapsed fans to tune in and see what’s going on. The downside, as several commenters on Stern’s tweet pointed out, is that the Clash wasn’t exactly edge of your seat-style entertainment.

Next: Clash instant reaction: Fords will be fine in the 500

The Daytona 500 could be, and it’s at the very least full of the kind of uncertainty that can sometimes work to a sport’s benefit. If the TV numbers for the Great American Race tick upwards year over year and the same thing is true the next week at Atlanta, then we’ve got ourselves a story — and a welcome one at that.