The NASCAR on Prime Video era began with room to grow in the ratings.
Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 from Charlotte averaged a 1.2 rating and 2.72 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, according to the new Nielsen “Big Data” measure that Prime is transacting on in its debut season. Per Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the race averaged 2.6 million using the traditional “panel-only” Nielsen measure that is directly comparable to past years. Either way, it was the smallest audience for the Coca-Cola 600 in at least 32 years.
During the FOX era (2001-24), no Coca-Cola 600 ever averaged fewer than three million. Last year’s race, which was delayed and shortened by rain, was the network’s all-time low with an audience of 3.20 million on a “Big Data” basis and 3.10 million using the traditional panel-only metric. (“Big Data” is retroactive to 2023.)
The 15 percent decline is actually on the modest side compared to the races that shifted from FOX last season to FS1 this year — Bristol (-46%), Las Vegas (-31%) and Phoenix (-30%).
Ross Chastain’s win, which on a Big Data basis peaked with 2.92 million in the 8:15 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the third-largest audience of the season outside of broadcast television. Two FS1 races rank higher — the aforementioned Las Vegas (3.01M) and Phoenix (2.82M) on back-to-back weekends in March.
On the ‘biggest day in motorsports’ — which in addition to the Coca-Cola 600 includes the Indy 500 and Monaco Grand Prix — the 600 was the only one to decline. The Indy 500 delivered its largest audience since 2008 with 7.09 million in its debut on FOX, more-than-doubling the Coca-Cola 600 in what ranks as the widest margin of victory for either race since at least 2000.
The Monaco Grand Prix finished not far behind the 600 with 2.3 million on ABC, the third-largest F1 audience ever on U.S. television.
While a shift from broadcast to streaming was inevitably going to result in a decline in viewership, the Coca-Cola 600 falling below three million in the same year the Indy 500 tops seven million is an unflattering juxtaposition.
Nevertheless, the move to Amazon did have some of the desired impacts on the composition of NASCAR’s audience. Sunday’s median age of 55.8 is younger than the average of NASCAR races on linear television (61.9), and while some of that is due to older viewers not tuning in at their usual levels, it is also the case that the race overperformed among younger demos. Excluding races on broadcast television, the Coca-Cola 600 was the most-watched NASCAR event in the three years of the “Big Data” era among adults 18-34 (229K), 18-49 (800K) and 25-54 (1.00M).
Prime also retained more than a third of its audience for its 67-minute postrace show, which averaged 1.04 million in a window that extended beyond Midnight ET. It is not typical for NASCAR races to have postgame coverage of any meaningful length.
It is also the case that NASCAR entered the new Amazon deal with long term goals in mind. “I think what we try to do, just because it’s a long season and a long partnership that we’re just kicking off here, is think less on a race by race, weekend-by-weekend basis, and more big picture,” NASCAR Senior Vice President, Broadcasting & Innovation Brian Herbst told Sports Media Watch prior to the race last week.
More to the point, NASCAR expects year one of the seven-year Amazon deal to set a “baseline” on which future seasons will build. In the meantime, that may mean sacrificing viewership in the short-term. “To the extent that the Coca-Cola 600 can be leveraged as kind of a key signature event for Amazon to get them into the NASCAR business, that’s a strategic move that we’re more than happy to make.”
