Efforts to sell tickets for Sunday’s Daytona 500 shifted into high gear this week at the Daytona International Speedway. Ticket offices not only have extended their hours, they’re offering two-day packages that include Saturday’s Busch Series race.

Sellouts used to be easy at Daytona. And while the first race of the stock car season probably will wind up as standing room only, the racetrack no longer rests solely on the sport’s popularity to fill its grandstands.

For months, the speedway has used a national advertising program and has tried to create more attractive ticket plans.

The same goes for the California Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway - tracks that host the three races that follow the Daytona 500.

Racetracks aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch of stagnant, if not declining, interest. Television ratings hit the wall last year, triggering concern throughout the industry.

NASCAR and its partners are aware of the issue. They can see the numbers from Nielsen Media Research. They can see the empty seats. For now, they view it as nothing more than an anomaly, a temporary ebb.

“TV ratings, they are going to go up and down in cycles,” said NASCAR chairman Brian France. “We look at TV ratings with a longer view so that won’t have any effect on anything we would do. If we could enhance competition, we are going to try to do that. You can see that we have made we think some good steps, but they are careful steps, and we’ll take a look and see how they go. We have no timetable; you have to go obviously a year or two. We’ll all say that it has some of the impact and benefit that we want, and we’ll see that as we go down the road.”

More at the Florida Times Union

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