- Viewership down 30% on last year’s race, which aired on main Fox channel
- Audience up 28.6% compared to first cable race of 2024 in Martinsville
- Average YTD viewership sitting at 4.28m compared to 4.08m last year
Last weekend’s Nascar Cup Series race at Phoenix averaged 2.82 million viewers on FS1, making it the most-watched on cable since 2021.
Viewership peaked at 3.39 million viewers as Christopher Bell became the first Nascar Cup Series driver to win three consecutive races since Kyle Larson in 2021.
Phoenix averaged 4.03 million viewers for the 2024 edition of the race but this is not a direct comparison as it aired on the main Fox channel. However, this does mean this is the least-watched Phoenix race of all time thanks to its historic position on network television.
Compared to Martinsville, which was the first race in 2024 to be broadcast on FS1, viewership was up 28.6 per cent year-over-year (YoY).
Nascar will be on network television only twice more this season before the playoffs.
Last year, 11 Cup Series races aired on the main Fox channel but, due to a combination of Nascar’s new multi-platform broadcast deal and Fox’s new commitments to IndyCar, this number has been reduced to just five in 2025.
For context, Nascar averaged 3.74 million viewers through 11 races on Fox and 2.41 million viewers through seven races on FS1 in 2024. This combined for a full average of 3.22 million viewers across 18 races.
With nine races on FS1 in 2025, this looks set to negatively impact Nascar’s overall viewership ahead of a stretch of ten races split equally between Prime Video and TNT Sports, which are new broadcasters for this season.
There was good news for the second-tier Xfinity Series on The CW, though, which saw average viewership increase 13 per cent YoY to 1.23 million viewers.
Related posts
- Nascar’s US$7.7bn TV deal: Why the annual value went up, who gets what, and the impact on fans
- What’s going on with Nascar’s charter system?
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