NASCAR Viewers Are Returning, Slowly

Getty Images Six million tuned in to see Kyle Busch and the Daytona 500.

NASCAR is not hurting for money. The organization inked a seven-year, $7.7 billion agreement with Fox, NBC, TNT and Amazon in November 2023. But television ratings still have not found their grip despite a slight rebound in the latter part of the 2023 season, according to Forbes.

Fox garnered 6.0 million viewers for February 19’s rain-delayed Daytona 500, according to Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern. That’s far less than 2020’s 7.3 million, which also ran on a Monday but likely got a boost by former President Trump’s appearance.

Ratings for the prior week’s Busch Light Clash were also down — big. Rain impacted that race and, thus, viewership, but the numbers were downright poor. FS1 got 1.5 million viewers for the Saturday-run Busch Light Clash, down from 3.65 million viewers in 2023 and 4.3 million in 2022.

It’s not all NASCAR’s fault.

Sunday Will Never Be the Same

Television is not what it was. NASCAR races can be found on the big broadcast networks, Fox and NBC, as well as FS1, TNT, and Amazon. Plus, there’s a near-infinite amount of new content, including sports, scattered across ESPN, FuboTV, YouTube TV, Apple TV, and the like. The audience is fragmented.

That NASCAR and executive producer Dale Earnhardt, Jr. chose Netflix to showcase NASCAR: Full Speed shows just how much the television viewing landscape has changed over the past several years.

Simply put, streaming networks, social media, and cable television allow for much more content, and more fan engagement, but they don’t aggregate viewers the way broadcast networks once could.

Consider the ratings for NASCAR’s Clash at the Coliseum, which NASCAR was forced to hastily move from Sunday to Saturday night due to rain. Sports Media Watch had it as just the 7th most-watched sports event of the night.

Ahead of it were three college basketball games, an NBA game, a women’s college basketball game — featuring superstar Caitlin Clark — and the PGA Tour Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

The Clash just managed to beat out the NHL All-Star Game.

There’s not simply more channels, there’s far more sports. NASCAR is competing in this new television landscape. This helps explain NASCAR’s continued efforts to bring in a younger and more diverse demographic.

Not to mention experimenting with new races in non-traditional territories, such as the Chicago street race.

Today’s NASCAR Drivers Not Getting It Done

Tough as it may be to hear, today’s NASCAR drivers are not creating the must-watch buzz the previous generation brought to every race. To be fair, today’s drivers are competing in an entirely new media landscape. Still, the numbers are stark.

According to Jon Lewis with Sports Media Watch, the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series was the “least-watched season on record.” NASCAR averaged 2.86 million viewers in 2023, compared to 3.03 million in 2022. Ryan Blaney’s championship win in Phoenix averaged 3.2 million viewers, down 9% from 2022.

The numbers are far worse, however, compared to the previous generation. Blaney’s win garnered a peak audience of 3.8 million — compared to almost 19 million in 2005, in a championship race that Tony Stewart had essentially locked up before the start.

The double-digit millions of viewers from 20 years past, before Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV — and Tik Tok — will likely never come back. NASCAR will seek out new avenues for revenues, and seek out new fanbases. The good news, the drops of the past few years appear to be rebounding. As Forbes noted, NBC’s NASCAR ratings started to pick up in the latter half of 2023.

Plus, NASCAR is using social media to reach more fans, and not just on the weekend. NASCAR President Steve Phelps told Forbes that while “television has been a bit of a mixed bag,” “social consumption for NASCAR” is up.

Focusing on “social consumption” should help. With the 7-year television deal locked down, NASCAR now needs to focus on growing its audience across all channels.