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Legendary announcer says NASCAR isn't attracting enough young fans to move the sport forward

By Samuel Stubbs | Last updated Apr 24, 2025 11:04 PM ET

As a veteran of nearly five decades of NASCAR broadcasting, Mike Joy knows a thing or two about NASCAR's fan base.

Joy was working for MRN during the 1979 Daytona 500, which is arguably the most important race in NASCAR history due to how it transformed NASCAR from a largely regional sport to a nationwide phenomenon.

Joy was working for CBS in the 1990s and Fox in the early to mid-2000s when NASCAR soared in popularity and became the second-most popular sport in America behind only the NFL.

Joy, who has called NASCAR Cup Series races for Fox for 25 years, was also there in the late 2000s when NASCAR's popularity began to fall. He's still calling races today, when NASCAR's viewership has stabilized but is still nowhere close to where it was in the mid-2000s.

Joy spoke with Kevin Harvick on Harvick's podcast, "Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour" and discussed what he sees as the main problem with NASCAR's modern fan base.

"We have 18- and 20-year-olds coming into the Cup Series and making a mark," Joy told Harvick. "The fan base is getting older. We're not attracting the younger fanbase that we need to move this sport forward into the next decade, (and) into the next couple of decades."

Joy recounted what it was like to be involved in NASCAR in the mid-2000s, when the sport hit its peak in popularity.

"You couldn't go into a supermarket without knowing about NASCAR," the veteran announcer said. "It was everywhere. When the sponsors stopped activating toward the general public and toward the race fans, the sport just took a giant dump in the relative to everyday life department. We lost a lot of that young fanbase that we really need to covet if we're going to grow this sport again."

In 2017, the average age of a NASCAR fan in the United States was 58 years old, up nine years from the average in 2006, according to Yahoo. No recent data from an accredited source is available, but it wouldn't be surprising if NASCAR's fan base is still among the oldest of professional sports in the United States, if not older than it was eight years ago.

Samuel Stubbs

Hailing from the same neck of the woods as NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin, Samuel has been covering NASCAR for Yardbarker since February 2024. He has been a member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) since October of 2024. When he’s not writing about racing, Samuel covers Arkansas Razorback basketball for Yardbarker

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