- Nielsen uses weighted average to work out 1.36m viewers
- Average of publicly released figure sits at 1.2m viewers
- Season finale in Nashville averages audience of 1.14m, a 136% YoY increase
IndyCar averaged a total of 1.36 million viewers for its debut season on Fox, according to data released by Nielsen.
That makes it the most-watched season of IndyCar in 17 years and a 27 per cent year-over-year (YoY) increase on NBC’s final season broadcasting the series.
The data from Nielsen uses a weighted average to work out season viewership. The average of the publicly released figures across the year is 1.2 million – 42 per cent higher than last year’s unweighted average.
The average for the season minus the Indianapolis 500, which averaged 7.01 million viewers, was just over 832,000 viewers. This falls just below the 837,000 viewers NBC recorded in 2024, highlighting that Fox still has work to do to attract viewers outside of IndyCar’s flagship event.
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What will promote some optimism is the strong result from the final race of the season in Nashville. Despite the championship battle already being decided, the season finale averaged 1.14 million viewers, becoming the first race to surpass one million since Gateway in June. This represented a 136 per cent YoY increase compared to the previous Nashville race.
Thanks to that end-of-season result, the 2025 IndyCar season was its first without a race below 500,000 viewers in at least the past decade.
Nashville was the first race to fall under Nielsen’s new method of calculating viewership averages. The broadcast analytics firm is now to combine insights from its household television viewing panel with big data in order to provide more accurate audience measurements in the streaming era.
Digging further into the data from the IndyCar season, oval circuits drew the highest average viewership with 1.87 million viewers per race – but this was due to the success of the Indy 500.
Without that race, oval circuits actually performed worse than street circuits, with 845,600 viewers compared to 941,000 viewers. Road courses averaged 760,900 viewers.
Fox will be encouraged by a solid start to its broadcast relationship with IndyCar. Now, as a part-owner of the series, Fox’s focus will be on turning the tremendous success of the Indy 500 into stronger year-round viewership.
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