Denny Hamlin Talks About NASCAR’s Shortcomings For the Casual Fans Compared to Other American Sports

Is NASCAR and its teams doing enough for fans? This pretty much seems to be the question on the majority of minds right now in the offseason. As people continue discussing points for and against the idea of NASCAR satisfying fans, Cup Series drivers have jumped into the mix too. With many like Joey Logano, Carson Hocevar, and reporter Jeff Gluck having recently expressed their opinions on this hot off-season topic, Joe Gibbs Racing star Denny Hamlin has pitched in with his own views.

Not very surprisingly, he believes that the promotion ought to be doing more to appease fans in the area of facilitating sports betting.

Denny Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr discuss the implications of legalizing online sports betting in NASCAR

Over the last few years, we saw NASCAR lead the frontier for legalizing sports betting across the country. In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned PASPA and gave states the power to regulate betting on the sport as they wished, but not every state took up the opportunity to wave the green flag. In some states like North Carolina, only in-person betting was allowed previously. However, that changed when Governor Roy Cooper signed the North Carolina sports betting law back in June.

The change is expected to roll out in the first half of 2024 and online sports book operators could then enter the market legally. The positive outcome of the same was one of the key talking points between Denny Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr on the recent ‘Dale Jr Download’ episode.

With Junior asking Hamlin’s take on what impact it would have on the sport, the latter believed that it would be a positive and welcome change. He said, “I think it will have a good impact on the sport. A heavy impact is a stretch for now”. However, he did have one key issue with the way betting was happening now in NASCAR, without any support from the promotion to the “casual” fan.

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Joe Gibbs’ driver believes progress needs to be made by NASCAR to help the “casual” fan

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Continuing their discussion on the topic, Dale Earnhardt Jr drew comparisons between the outlook of fans on fantasy NASCAR and betting. Mentioning that he was very much into fantasy over the years, he thought that it was something that has a lot of potential though you couldn’t make money from it. He said, “I played a lot of fantasy NASCAR over the last several years through NBC. It’s fun, but it hasn’t really taken off. So, I feel like that is sort of very similar to the temperature people are around gambling on racing.”

Responding to him, Hamlin ranted about how every other sport in the US had plenty of mediums for their fans to gain knowledge essential to make an educated bet or pick their fantasy players. He contended that there weren’t many such platforms available for NASCAR, save DirtyMo Media. In his words, “Until we have more fantasy or betting shows in NASCAR, TV needs to be one of them. You gotta have a half hour designated somewhere in there. Every other sport has some sort of fantasy or betting show to at least get the people. I mean, you might just as well play roulette or, red or black if you don’t know what you’re doing, right?”

Hamlin further added that he wished some sort of effort towards the same would be made through the new production studio that the promotion is opening up. Dale Earnhardt Jr agreed with Joe Gibbs’ driver, acknowledging, “100 percent. I agree with that.” Will NASCAR listen to the veterans of the sport and cater to the interests of the casual NASCAR fans?

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