IndyCar began its new FOX era with a big increase, but NASCAR still dominated weekend motorsports viewership despite a slight decline.
Sunday’s IndyCar Series season opener from St. Petersburg averaged 1.42 million viewers on FOX, marking the largest IndyCar audience outside of the Indianapolis 500 since the same event on ABC in 2011 (1.84M). (The race also averaged 1.41 million on NBC three years ago, and given the increase in Nielsen out-of-home viewing since then, it is likely that race would still rank higher all things being equal.)
Viewership increased 45% from last year’s IndyCar opener on NBC (975K).
The race led into the NASCAR Cup Series from Circuit of the Americas, which as one would expect averaged a considerably higher 4.13 million viewers — down 5% from the third race of last season (Las Vegas: 4.4M) but up 25% from last year’s race at COTA, which was run later in March opposite NCAA March Madness (3.3M).
Christopher Bell’s win, which peaked with 4.9 million viewers, was easily the most-watched sporting event of the weekend.
Both IndyCar and NASCAR are in the first year of new media rights deals, but took sharply different approaches. IndyCar struck a deal with Fox Sports that will place every single race on broadcast television, while NASCAR struck deals with Fox, NBC Sports, Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery that will ultimately result in fewer races on broadcast. Starting this weekend, there will be only two Cup Series races on broadcast television until the final three weeks of the season.
In other racing action, the Xfinity Series race at COTA averaged 1.12 million on CW — up 9% from last year’s third race at Las Vegas on FS1 (1.0M) and up 25% from last year’s COTA race, which also aired on FS1 (896K).
Including the preseason “Clash,” NASCAR’s Cup Series is up 12% from last year and the Xfinity Series is up 37%. Keep in mind last year’s Clash and Daytona 500 were both impacted by rain. This year’s Daytona race was also impacted by rain, but less so than a year ago.
