Welcome back to “The Needle,” a ratings-focused column on Sports Media Watch that will break down the numbers, attempt to put some context behind the data, and discuss broader trends in measurement and television viewing.
It was no surprise that viewership declined for year one of the new NASCAR media rights deal, but the where and why could have implications for the six remaining years.
NASCAR Cup Series races averaged 2.48 million viewers during the 2025 season (including the preseason “Clash”), down 14% from last year (2.87M). The November 2 season finale from Phoenix averaged a 1.4 rating and 2.77 million viewers, down 10% in ratings and 4% in viewership from last year (1.6, 2.9M).
It should be noted that NASCAR got essentially zero lift from the shift to Nielsen’s new “Big Data + Panel” methodology, which builds on the traditional Nielsen panel by adding data from smart TVs, set-top boxes and in some cases (e.g. Amazon) internal, first-party measurement. NASCAR races averaged 2.476 million viewers on a panel-only basis, with “Big Data” taking that figure all the way up to 2.478 million, or an increase of 0.08 percent.
NASCAR president Steve Phelps said at NASCAR’s October 31 “State of the Sport” press conference that the 14% decline was “exactly what we predicted” in year one of a media rights deal that reduced the number of races on broadcast television to just nine. “Are we concerned about where the ratings are? No, it’s exactly where we thought they’d be.”
But it is fair to say that NASCAR looked like it might beat those expectations midway through the season. The Fox portion of the season was flat compared to last year, which as NASCAR Senior Vice President/Broadcasting & Innovation Brian Herbst told Sports Media Watch last week, was a “pleasant surprise” given the reduction in races on the FOX broadcast network. And the Amazon Prime portion also “performed above expectations,” though viewership was down 16 percent from the equivalent races last year.
It was the second half of the season where NASCAR started to see “a little bit of softness,” per Herbst, starting with a TNT slate that opened with a rain-wracked Saturday night race in Atlanta. “We started seeing some softness on the TNT side, and then that kind of continued into USA.” Those numbers on USA, Phelps said in his State of the Sport address, were “a little softer than we had expected.”
Is basic cable up to the task?
USA — which under the new deal carries more races than any other individual network — was down 16 percent from last year. Compared to the two newcomers this season, that is on par with Prime Video and better than TNT (-25%). The other returning Cup Series cable partner, FS1, was actually up for its portion of the season, but that is partly a function of the network getting more of the higher-rated early season races that traditionally were carried by FOX.
For all the talk about the Amazon Prime portion of the schedule, the new NASCAR media rights deals are cable-heavy. What cable-heavy means in 2025 is obviously changing. All TNT races were available on HBO Max — though that streaming audience was not included in TNT’s Nielsen-estimated viewership — and starting next season, all FS1 races will be available on Fox One (which had not debuted when the season started).
But all USA Network races were cable-exclusive, and once USA officially separates from NBCUniversal as part of its spinoff into the new venture Versant, it will be part of a company that for the time being consists solely of cable networks.
And USA is an increasingly important part of the NASCAR TV picture. After replacing NBCSN as NBC’s primary sports cable home, USA (along with Golf Channel, CNBC and other NBCU cable networks) will soon officially be spun off into Versant. Sports Business Journal reported last month that NBCU parent company Comcast is classifying NASCAR as a Versant property ahead of the spinoff. While the NBC broadcast network will continue to air its contractual allotment of four races, NASCAR will be fully a Versant property.
This year’s numbers do not offer a clear indication as to whether the cable-exclusive factor drove viewership downward. Playoff viewership declined across the board, including for the season’s final three races on the NBC broadcast network. Given the late season swoon, it could just as easily be the case that fans were less inclined than usual to find their way to a fourth, fifth or sixth different network to carry a race this season.
But if the Cup Series provides no easy answers, the Xfinity Series might be more illuminating.
Is the Cup Series stretched too thin?
NASCAR is in the rare position of pursuing two opposing content strategies at once. For the Cup Series, that is a multiplatform strategy of broadcast television, cable and streaming. “I think we wanted to spread our bets a little bit and make sure that there were opportunities for us in each one,” Herbst said.
It is far too early to judge the success of that multiplatform plan — NASCAR expects viewership to grow over time — but for the secondary Xfinity Series, the opposite strategy has borne early fruit.
Under the same media rights deal that split the Cup Series among four different partners, the Xfinity Series moved exclusively to a single broadcast network outlet, Nexstar-owned CW. The series averaged 1.05 million viewers this season, up 11% from last year, when races were split across four different broadcast and cable networks (FOX/FS1 and NBC/USA). On an apples-to-apples panel-only basis, its average audience of 1.03 million was still up 9%.
The Xfinity Series bucked a downward trend that not only hit the Cup Series, but the cable-heavy Truck Series as well (483K, -4%).
Could the Cup Series eventually follow the Xfinity blueprint? “As content patterns change, then we’re going to react to those changes as the market develops and the market evolves,” Herbst told SMW. “So to the extent that you’re seeing a continuing of a higher delta between broadcast and some other platforms — like broadcast and cable or broadcast and streaming — then those type of data points will inform any future distribution strategy that we have.”
And NASCAR purposefully pursued a shorter media rights term of seven years — compared to the ten-year contract it struck in its 2013 negotiations — so it could more quickly respond to changes in viewer behavior. “We did a seven-year deal this time so that we can get back in market a little bit quicker and react to the changing consumption patterns as they come up in real time,” Herbst said earlier in the conversation.
To be sure, NASCAR’s competitors are following the Xfinity Series model. The IndyCar Series debuted a new deal with FOX this year that put all races on broadcast television, and benefited to the tune of a 27 percent increase in viewership. It was IndyCar that delivered the largest motorsports audience of the year, a rarity that had happened only once previously in 30 years — in 2021, when the Daytona 500 ended after Midnight due to rain.
Formula 1 is also going with a single-platform approach in its new deal, albeit with streamer Apple TV.
In the meantime, Herbst said the Cup Series mix of broadcast, cable and digital will “look generally the same” for the remainder of the deal. There might be more crosspromotion next season, including between the newly separated NBC and Versant, but for now, NASCAR remains heavily invested in the success of cable television for the near term. “Cable was still a very powerful vehicle and outlet for us when we signed the agreements in 2023,” Herbst noted. “Our bread and butter has really been in linear TV, whether it’s on broadcast or cable, for a long time now.”
Ultimately, NASCAR is blending multiple strategies that may or may not be compatible, and each brings with it some downside risk. There is the 2020s-era multiplatform approach — preferred by the biggest leagues — which offers the opportunity to expand the sport’s footprint at the risk of spreading itself thinner than is tenable for viewers. And there is the 2010s-era cable-heavy approach, which tethers the sport to a medium that is in protracted decline.
But if the Xfinity Series is any indication, it remains to be seen whether either path is the best road forward for the sport on television.
