Danica Mania has hit Daytona
If there was anyone out there that doubted Danica Patrick’s star power in the world of sports they have now been officially silenced.
This Saturday Patrick will make her NASCAR Nationwide debut after last week’s strong 6th place finish at Daytona in the ARCA race. But finishing 6th really does not tell the story of the impact that she had in her first race sitting behind the wheel of the #7 JR Motorsports Chevy.
The real numbers belong to Speed network’s coverage of the ARCA Racing Series season opener from Daytona logged in an impressive an averaged 2.4 million viewers on an 87% surge over the 1.3 million who tuned in last year’s competition, according to Nielsen rating. The performance was the network’s second best ever behind its exclusive coverage of NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race.
How impressive were the ratings? How about making Speed’s coverage of Patrick’s first stock car race the number one show on basic cable in its time slot and that my fiends is power.
Now the broadcasting beneficiaries of “Danica Mania” will be ESPN2, Speed, MRN and Sirius-XM. All are no pun intended “gearing up” for what could be record ratings for a Nationwide race come noon on Saturday afternoon.
An ESPN spokesperson was tempered in his optimism about the possibility of Saturday’s Nationwide race being a ratings record maker:” There are so many factors that go into ratings that it’s hard to point to one thing that could make a huge difference. However, Danica is a sports personality who has been proven to have the ability to move the needle, so we are hopeful that many curious viewers will tune in on Saturday to watch her make her NASCAR debut.”
MRN and Sirius/XM will be all over the Nationwide build-up on their NASCAR channel meanwhile here is the ESPN2 schedule starting today:
Thursday — coverage of NASCAR Nationwide Series practice 11:30 a.m. on ESPN2
Thursday — NASCAR Now (daily news program) at 5:30 p.m. on ESPN2
Friday — coverage of NASCAR Nationwide Series qualifying 3 p.m. on ESPN2
Friday — NASCAR Now at 6 p.m. on ESPN2
Saturday — NASCAR Countdown (pre-race show) at noon on ESPN2
Saturday — telecast of NASCAR Nationwide Series 300-mile race at 1:15 p.m. on ESPN2
Saturday — SportsCenter from Daytona at 4 p.m. on ESPN2
Here is some good video on Danica and her ARCA performance
