Denny Hamlin knows how to fix the lack of interest in NASCAR

Former Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin has some ideas to help get fans interested in NASCAR again.

NASCAR, like many professional sports, is struggling to get fans in seats and watching at home, but driver Denny Hamlin knows how to fix that.

Getting fans to sit and watch any sport — outside of football — for three-to-four hours in today’s social media, short attention span era is nearly impossible. Baseball is implementing small rule changes to speed up games, the NBA decreased the number of timeouts a team is allowed to take in the final two minutes of the game. Everywhere you look major sports leagues are trying to appeal to the average fan today by making the game shorter and quicker.

For NASCAR, Hamlin thinks similar changes should be put in place to reel fans back to the racetracks.

“To me the race distances themselves are hard to keep anyone tuned in for three to four hours,” Hamlin said. “The attendance thing is on the tracks, they really have to spend the money and invest. They completely redid the facilities at Daytona and turned it into a world class facility.”

With ticket prices to sporting events rising, fans want to know they’re getting their money’s worth when attending a game or a race. Hamlin believes that an easy way to get fans invested in showing up to the tracks is by creating a more fan-friendly environment that people will enjoy attending.

It also doesn’t help that the loudness of the cars make it nearly impossible to hear the person on either side of you. Sporting events are equal parts hanging out and talking with your friends and watching the actual game in front of you. Take away the social aspect of it and you lose a lot of casual fans.

“There’s some small little things that could definitely make things better, but it’s no easy task just changing things,” Hamlin said. “There’s a lot of stakeholders that all have a say. There’s a process it has to go through, but I think in the next few years you’ll see some changes.”

If NASCAR wants fans to show up in droves, or spend an afternoon watching races like the Daytona 500 on television, those changes will need to happen sooner, rather than later.