- Daytona 500 viewership up 13.4% YoY
- Xfinity Series averaged 1.83m on The CW for Daytona event
Nascar’s season-opening Daytona 500 averaged 6.76 million viewers on Fox despite significant rain delays.
This represented a 13.4 per cent year-over-year (YoY) increase compared to last year’s viewership of 5.96 million, which was the second-lowest figure on record.
According to Sports Business Journal (SBJ), the race was likely trending towards an audience of around 8.5 million before it was red flagged on lap 11, leading to a delay of more than three hours.
The race was still the most-watched Nascar telecast since the 2023 Daytona 500, providing a much-needed boost for the series as it enters its new domestic broadcast deal.
This year’s Daytona 500 was the most-watched sports event of the weekend in the US and peaked at eight million viewers.
Due to the rain delay, the last hour and 45 minutes of the race clashed with the 50th anniversary programming for Saturday Night Live (SNL), so it can be reasonably assumed that this also affected overall viewership.
Meanwhile, the season-opening event in the second-tier Xfinity Series averaged 1.83 million viewers on The CW, making it the most-watched Xfinity Series race since April 2022. Additionally, this is the most-watched Xfinity Series season-opening event at Daytona since 2018.
According to multiple reports, The CW paid US$800 million for the broadcast rights. This is the first time that all Xfinity Series races have been made available on free-to-air (FTA) television in the US.
The channel got a head start on its deal by airing the final eight races of last season thanks to an agreement with NBC Sports, which helped with its positioning as the home of the Xfinity Series ahead of 2025.
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