Hold The Commissioner's Calls Today

Nascar's new TV deal: $4.5 billion for 8 years.

"The bottom line is, Nascar is a national sport with very large ratings," George Bodenheimer, ESPN and ABC Sports president, said yesterday in a conference call with reporters. "Secondly, obviously the sport is extremely fan-friendly and sponsor-friendly. We're very bullish on the sales prospects of this property."

And...

"We at Fox believed in it, the folks at Nascar preached it and it was just a matter of Madison Avenue catching up, and it was really in black and white," said Ed Goren, the president of Fox Sports. "All they had to do was see the ratings that Nascar was generating on Fox."

No mention of demographics. Just ratings.