Quote Originally Posted by call_me_andrew
I read an article concerning the decline in Indy 500 ratings this year. One person commented and claimed it is "Because NASCAR is booooooooooooooooooooooooring," his spelling, not mine.

I wouldn't call racing a "niche sport". In terms of global audience Formula One is second only to soccer.
In the US, F1 is definitely a niche sport. A few years ago, the TV ratings for F1 in the US were below the IRL.

In the world of sports entertainment, I still believe racing in general is a niche. As a big race fan, it pains me to say that. But if you look at the overall ratings and interest, the popularity has been declining slowly for a long time. Sure some events still bring in good rating's numbers - Indy, the Daytona 500, but society (at least in the US) has moved form the machine and industrial age to the electronic and environmental age. It is no accident racing series are trying to portray themselves as "green" and promote the technology to suggest relevance. Even NASCAR is moving toward electronic fuel injection and "green" fuels.

The demise of racing has been talked about for decades. Read some articles from 20 years ago, and racing should have been dead by now. Racing perseveres, but has struggles to maintain the current fan base. Some racing series are almost dead or finding it hard to survive. Years ago, I raced off-road motorcycles. The series I ran had events almost every week. Now they have a handful a year due to land closures. Many local short tracks are now housing developments or shopping centers. Take away the local feeder series, and professional racing suffers.