Fox Sports 1 earned its largest audience since rebranding thanks to NASCAR’s season-opening Sprint Unlimited. In other news, Fox Sports 2 also set a post-rebrand record, and NBCSN has attracted record numbers for the Olympics.
Fox Sports 1 Earns Largest Audience For NASCAR
- Saturday’s NASCAR Sprint Unlimited earned a 2.0 U.S. rating and 3.5 million viewers on Fox Sports 1, the largest audience on FS1 since the network rebranded last August. Despite the record, Saturday’s telecast declined by 43% in ratings and 38% in viewership from last year on FOX (3.5, 5.7M), and by 52% and 53%, respectively, from 2012 (4.2, 7.5M). It ranks as the lowest rated and least-viewed edition of the race (previously the Budweiser Shootout) since at least 2001. (Sat. numbers from Media Life Magazine, Bloomberg)
FA Cup Delivers Largest Audience to FS2
- Fox Sports 2 earned 257,000 viewers for the Arsenal/Liverpool FA Cup match on Sunday, the network’s largest audience since rebranding in August. Unlike Fox Sports 1, which is in north of 90 million homes, Fox Sports 2 (previously Fuel TV) is in well under 50 million. (Fox Sports)
NBCSN Sets Weekday Viewership Records With Olympics
- Live coverage of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics earned NBC Sports Network earned 1.6 million viewers on Monday, the network’s largest weekday audience ever in the time period (6 AM-3 PM). Including Tuesday’s coverage, which earned 778,000 viewers, all seven weekday Olympic telecasts on NBCSN rank as the network’s most-viewed ever in the 6 AM-3 PM timeslot. (NBC Sports Group Press Box [1], [2])
