Shops, I think there are less in general not just r/c, costs today are too high, there are plenty of news stories about the death of the high street, that includes the local hobby shop. With the web you only need a few good retailers to satisfy the market so the ones that got themselves sorted early on with decent websites and good customer service get the trade. The way the web is organised it’s hard for new traders to break in because search google and the well established shops are at the top of the results which then get the clicks and the business. Fewer businesses will naturally translate to fewer sponsors but my impression is the companies left support many more people because they need representation across the country, not just at their local track.
People have definitely moved to Facebook more, I see stuff posted for sale here that has also been posted on one of the trading groups on Facebook but plenty of items only on Facebook. The trouble with Facebook is it is fragmented and hard to find stuff rather than a site like this which has everything neatly organised and accessible but on the other hand seeing posts about friends racing rc cars in your timeline might encourage you to find out more and maybe give it a try. I would say based on your numbers, posts on new cars and items for sale are up but they are in a different place.
Membership numbers, probably they are right to not publish anything as what would be the upside? Sport is a luxury item which will do well when the economy is doing well but shrink back in tougher times, but a period of reducing numbers would no doubt be seized on by those who for the last 20 years have been saying this sport is dying and when newcomers read posts like that they keep walking. On the flip side how much of a growth would be required for people to be posting positive stories to entice newcomers, I suspect it would have to be a fairly large percentage increase.
Number of clubs is an interesting one. I am not sure that will correlate well to a sport in growth or decline. A club could be lost due to any number of reasons which have nothing to do with numbers, for example if they lost their track venue. Likewise a new club could be formed without any increase in numbers. I have seen a club (in a different sport) split into 3 because of some falling outs and if anything there was a decline in people despite this metric showing an increase.
Interestingly that the one hard data point you do to have to hand does seem to disprove your theory though!
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