NASCAR TV ratings are a broken record.
Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Pocono 400 earned a 1.7 rating and 2.75 million viewers on NBCSN, down 23% in ratings and 25% in viewership from last year and down 35% and 36% respectively from 2015 (2.6, 4.3M). The 2016 race was postponed due to rain.
Kyle Busch‘s win was the lowest rated edition of the race since at least 1998 and the least-watched since at least 2000.
Just five years ago the race had a 3.2 rating and 4.9 million viewers on ESPN. A decade ago, it had a 3.8 and 6.2 million.
Pocono was the 17th of 19 Cup Series races this season — excluding rainouts — to post a double-digit decline in both ratings and viewership. Each of those 16 has hit a multi-year low, with 15 of those falling to all-time or decade-plus lows.
Despite the lower numbers, Sunday’s audience was the highest for a NASCAR race on cable since Dover in early May (2.77M). For the season, Pocono ranks as the third-most watched cable race behind both Dover and Texas in April (2.82M).
That silver lining is cold comfort given how low the bar for success is this season. Not one of the ten races on cable this season has had a 2.0 rating and 3.0 million viewers. At the same point last year, only three of nine races on cable failed to reach those marks.
On one of the lightest sporting weekends of the year, NASCAR was the highest rated and most-watched sporting event on any network. The final round of the PGA Tour Canadian Open ranked second (1.4, 2.1M).
[Numbers from ShowBuzz Daily 7.31]
