XM Gets Lapped by Sirius

Well, things don’t look good for XM Satellite radio as it lost one of its largest draws to Sirius this week. If it wasn’t bad enough that the struggling competitor got Howard Stern on its doggy network, now yanking XM’s bread-and-butter NASCAR contract will surely make XM clutch tightly to the last grand sport available that Sirius doesn’t have, the MLB. Having the NFL, hockey (well, when it existed), basketball, European soccer, and now NASCAR, one has to wonder what XM is thinking.

Dr. Laura isn’t going to have people flock to XM and what I thought was the lamest aspect of XM, car racing on radio, is something that drew nearly 40% of all new listeners to XM alone! That draw is gone and I guess it’s only a matter of time before XM’s grand slam with baseball will be gone, too, at the rate it’s handling things. Sure, there’s always arena football and rugby, but it doesn’t seem like that’ll really work for the soon-to-be former number one satellite network. XM’s sitting pretty with three million listeners, but with hardware costs dipping dramatically, Sirius may be pulling the right punches at the right time to make XM radio to the power of eXecuted…