Featuring an overtime matchup of ranked Big Ten schools, the second edition of “FOX College Football Friday” was a much bigger draw than the first. Plus: the debut of NASCAR on CW delivered the network’s top sports audience in months; the IndyCar season dipped on NBC.
FOX CFB Friday much bigger in second week
In the second edition of the new FOX Friday night college football package, Illinois-Nebraska averaged 4.21 million viewers — up 63% from the network’s first Friday night game a week earlier (Arizona-Kansas State: 2.58M). Illinois’ overtime win, which peaked with 5.07 million in the 11:15 PM ET quarter-hour, was the most-watched Friday night program on FOX since Game 1 of last year’s World Series. FOX previously aired WWE Smackdown on Friday nights; that series has moved to USA Network.
For the second-straight week, the FOX Friday night game easily outpaced its ESPN counterpart — more-than-tripling the 1.37 million ESPN averaged for Stanford-Syracuse.
Xfinity Series debut is top sportscast on CW since December
In the debut of NASCAR on CW, Friday’s Xfinity Series race from Bristol (Tenn.) averaged 906,000 viewers — the network’s largest sports audience since the college football Arizona Bowl last December (1.10M). Viewership declined 9% from last year’s Bristol race on USA Network (993K), but nonetheless ranked as the highest for any Xfinity Series race since Indianapolis in July (1.16M).
The race outperformed its lead-out, a San Jose State-Washington State college football game that drew 542,000.
CW officially takes over as the home of the NASCAR Xfinity Series next season, but is getting a head start to close out this season after acquiring the final ten races from NBC.
IndyCar season down slightly as NBC era ends
The recently-completed IndyCar season averaged 1.30 million viewers, per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, down 2% from last year and even with 2022. That figure excludes races that were bumped to CNBC; with those included, the season averaged 1.15 million (-13%). Races on broadcast network NBC averaged 1.69 million, though the season finale at Nashville was the least-watched IndyCar race ever on broadcast television.
The season averaged a streaming audience of 79,000 viewers per Adobe Analytics, up 44% from last year and a record for the series.
IndyCar racing moves to Fox Sports next season, which will carry all races on its FOX broadcast network.
