A dramatic NASCAR Chase For the Cup ended with a three-year viewership high.
NASCAR Sprint Cup racing from Homestead, the final race in the Chase For the Cup, drew a 3.1 final rating and 5.2 million viewers on ESPN Sunday — flat in ratings and up 2% in viewership from last year (3.1, 5.1M), up a tick and 10%, respectively, from 2012 (3.0, 4.8M), and the most-watched Chase finale since 2011 (6.8M).
The race earned the largest NASCAR audience on any network since the FOX season finale from Dover in June (5.4M) and the top audience on cable since Atlanta in September 2013 (5.3M).
On the other hand, it also tied the second-lowest rating from Homestead since NASCAR began racing there in 1998, matching last year and ahead of only 2012. Viewership was the third-lowest for the race since at least 2005, and likely further back than that.
Kevin Harvick won both the race and the Chase, the first time since Tony Stewart in 2011 that the Chase winner also won the season finale. In a bit of luck, three of the four drivers in contention for the Chase title — Harvick, Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin — ranked first, second and third entering Sunday’s final laps.
Homestead was the third straight Sprint Cup race to hit a multi-year high in viewership, following a six-year high from Phoenix and a four-year high from Texas. The year-over-year performance was rather modest compared to those two races, both of which increased double-digits from last year. Still, to end the season with three straight increases is no small feat considering how poorly the races performed most of the year.
Entering Texas, 24 of the 29 Sprint Cup races that could be compared to last year had declines in ratings, and 23 had declines in viewership. The sharp turnaround over the past three weeks may be attributable to the new Chase format, which had little impact over the first two rounds, but seemed to stir higher-than-usual interest as it reached a conclusion.
(Sun. numbers from ESPN)
