Mother Nature stalked NASCAR everywhere from Los Angeles to Chicago during the 2024 season, even resulting in a rare Monday Daytona 500, but the Cup Series still eked out an increase over last year.
The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season averaged 2.89 million viewers across NBC, USA, FOX and FS1, up 1% from last year (2.85M), with the ten-race playoffs averaging 2.33 million (+6%). Keep in mind that the season included several rain-affected races, including a fully postponed Daytona 500 and a Chicago Street Race that was both delayed and shortened by an unexpected downpour.
Sunday’s season finale from Phoenix averaged a 1.6 rating and 2.9 million viewers on NBC, flat in ratings and down 1% in viewership from last year, snapping a streak of five-straight year-over-year gains. Joey Logano’s win, which peaked with 3.5 million viewers, delivered the second-largest audience of the playoffs. Talladega had 3.1 million last month.
Shifting to the Xfinity Series, Saturday’s season finale averaged a 0.6 and 1.11 million on CW — the largest sports audience of the year on the Nexstar-owned “netlet” and the largest audience for the Xfinity Series finale since 2019 on the now-defunct NBCSN (1.2M). The race, which peaked with 1.4 million viewers, increased 17% over last year’s finale on USA Network (951K).
Rounding out the weekend slate, the Truck Series finale drew a 0.24 (flat) and 480,000 (+16%) on FS1.
This weekend marked the end of the NASCAR media rights deals that began in 2015. Under the new deal that begins next season, NBC and FOX will return in reduced capacities, with their broadcast networks carrying a combined nine races (down from 19 currently). Five races each will be set aside for Amazon Prime Video and TNT, and the entire Xfinity Series will air on CW.
The Truck Series will continue to air on Fox Sports.
