When Richmond Raceway had a date taken off of the NASCAR schedule for 2025, it looked like doom for the track. However, the fans responded in Virginia. Richmond was sold out this weekend for the Cup Series race on Saturday night.
While tracks like Richmond don’t have as many seats as they used to, selling 40,000+ tickets to any live sporting event is a win nowadays. It was a big statement from the Richmond fans to show out in the numbers that they did on Saturday night.
Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic talked about the sellout after the race. What does it mean for NASCAR at Richmond moving forward?
“Let’s talk about Richmond, though. I mentioned this sold-out crowd,” Gluck said on The Teardown. “Is this simply the case of reducing to one race, going back to Saturday night, is the answer here? How did they pull this off? This was a legit sold-out crowd. I mean, geez.”
“This race just hits differently on a Saturday night, apparently,” Bianchi said about the NASCAR race at Richmond. “And it does. We have seen the one-race template work at other places: Michigan, Pocono, Dover. You have one race, that’s your one time to see NASCAR, and it can’t be a ‘Hey, they’re going to be here later in he year.’ No. It’s like, if you don’t go now, you’re going to miss it for the year. So, it works. It really does work.
“It pushes people to come that are on the fence to come that may say, ‘Hey, I gotta go, if I don’t go now, I’m not going to see them.’ And this is the wya it should be. This is how it should be. And it’s worked over and over again, and I’ve talked to somebody, like a decision maker tonight, and they were like, ‘Man, if we could take a look at the schedule and start pulling off tracks that have two races and just make sure they have one day, we would have more of these kind of sold out crowds that want to be here and are ecited and that kind of thing.’
“And it’s true, you look at the schedule and there’s some redundancies. But you’re kind of locked into what it is, but this worked and good for Richmond man, because they needed it, in a big way.”
Richmond Raceway showed out for NASCAR. That is a good thing. The days of 100,000 fans in the stands every week are over. They were short-lived to begin with. NASCAR has made great strides to improve the fan experience at tracks. Part of the fan experience includes being there with other fans.
No one wants to go to a race with empty seats. So, seeing the stands packed on Saturday night was a major win.
