- Road America averaged 1.8m viewers with same strategy, its largest non-Indy 500 result for 15 years
- IndyCar is currently averaging 1.7m viewers on Fox through 11 races
IndyCar was forced to postpone its visit to Nashville last weekend, scuppering plans to stage the race immediately after the Fifa World Cup final to capitalise on the sizeable viewership.
The scheduling was designed to deliver IndyCar’s highest-ever viewership for a race outside of the Indianapolis 500, using a potentially sizeable lead-in from Fox’s coverage to achieve this.
“I’m not going to quote a number for what we think the Nashville race will do but it will be higher than what we just did with Road America,” Bill Wanger, head of programming and scheduling at Fox Sports, previously told BlackBook Motorsport.
“We’ll have to go back a few years into the record books to see the highest-rated non-Indy 500 [race]… and again it’ll be a great opportunity to expose the racing series to new audiences and getting them to become fans and future viewers.”
For context, Fox’s coverage of Road America was scheduled immediately after a World Cup group stage clash between Spain and Saudi Arabia, with two thirds (64 per cent) of soccer viewers sticking around for the race, which averaged 1.8 million.
The 2022 World Cup final averaged around 25 million viewers in the US, so retaining five per cent of that audience would have delivered a substantial record for IndyCar.
Having this opportunity taken away by the weather will be a great disappointment to IndyCar and Fox executives who had carefully planned this section of the season around the World Cup.
“[The strategy] started in December 2025 when the World Cup draw happened,” said Wanger.
“We knew what teams were playing in what windows… and then we took the next step of very purposely scheduling some IndyCar races after some World Cup games to really expose the racing series to new audiences.”
It will also be disheartening for the IndyCar sales team who had been hoping to maximise the upturn in viewership by generating more revenue through advertising opportunities.
Despite the disappointment, IndyCar will have reached new audiences regardless. The key measure of success will be how much of this new audience sticks around following the conclusion of the World Cup.
Prior to IndyCar’s race in Nashville, the series is averaging 1.7 million viewers through 11 events – a modern record at this point of the season.
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