For some NASCAR tracks, bigger doesn't mean better

If you were building it from scratch, the perfect NASCAR racetrack would have Richmond's length and Darlington's shape. It would have Phoenix's hillside and Watkins Glen's blue guardrails and Martinsville's curb. It would have Daytona's spacious garage area and Pocono's half-mile-long bathroom and Indianapolis' canyon of a frontstretch. It would have the theatrical aura of Bristol, the frontier bravado of Texas, and the showgirl panache of Las Vegas. It would have New Hampshire's free parking, Talladega's sprawling campground, and Homestead's glorious, palm-fringed tropical backdrop.

And it would have 80,000 seats.

Why? Because the mega-racetrack, that facility with 160,000 or 170,000 seats, is fast becoming a dinosaur. We saw more evidence of that Saturday in the Bank of America 500, when Lowe's Motor Speedway had plenty of good seats still available. Just like there were plenty of good seats available for recent Sprint Cup races at California and Dover and Talladega. Just like there almost certainly will be good seats still available for upcoming events at Atlanta and Texas. No question, the spiraling economy is having an impact -- it's hard to sell tickets when prospective buyers are worried about their mortgages or their 401(k)s. But in all honestly, things have been trending this way for a while. Remember, it was an effort to sell more tickets that led the 165,000-seat Charlotte track to move its annual fall race from Sunday afternoon to Saturday night, and that was all the way back in 2003.

Now, that bubble has burst. The build-build-build days when NASCAR racetracks expanded exponentially with the sport's popularity are clearly over, leaving some facilities with an embarrassing lack of sold seats on event weekends. NASCAR itself is still going strong, still pulling very good television ratings, still drawing live crowds that would swamp most other events. According to NASCAR, the average attendance per race is still around 120,000. But it's easy to see how the average viewer watching from home would draw certain conclusions about the sport's heath by seeing an aerial shot of a big racetrack with only three-quarters of its seats full.

Gone are the days when a place like Dover can add seats every year for 16 consecutive years, ballooning from 22,000 to 135,000 in the process. Gone are the days when 112,000-seat Richmond can count on a sellout before its event weekend begins. Gone are the days when Daytona has takers for its backstretch grandstand for its July race. Gone are the days when, from a seating capacity standpoint, bigger meant better. These days, the safest bets for a sellout are places like Darlington (62,000), Homestead-Miami (65,000), Chicagoland (75,000), and Kansas (81,000), tracks with grandstand numbers that seem relatively modest, but in reality would rival or exceed almost any major-college or professional football stadium in America. And it's been that way since long before the stock market went in the tank. (Continued)