For the second-straight week, the NASCAR viewership story differed considerably based on the methodology being reported.
Sunday’s rain-delayed NASCAR Cup Series race from Nashville averaged 2.01 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video per the official Nielsen “Big Data + Panel” currency, but only 1.66 million per the ‘panel-only’ methodology NASCAR is now reporting for its races. NASCAR last month said that it would no longer report its viewership using “Big Data + Panel,” returning to the panel-only metric that was the industry standard until last September.
On an apples-to-apples basis, the “Big Data + Panel” figure declined 3% from the same race last year (2.1M), while the panel-only figure declined a steeper 12% (vs. 1.9M). But as it is Nielsen policy to compare “Big Data + Panel” to last year’s panel-only numbers, officially viewership for the race increased 5%.
In two races on Prime Video this season, the “Big Data + Panel” figure has outpaced the panel-only number by a double-digit percentage — 21% at Nashville, after 15% at Charlotte. By comparison, for the nine Cup Series series points races on Fox Sports this season, the “Big Data” figure (3.34M) was actually slightly lower than the panel-only number (3.4M).
Unlike the previous week at Charlotte, there were fewer notable differences within the data. The peak quarter-hour was the same under both methodologies — 9:30 PM ET — with the “Big Data” figure being 2.32 million and the panel-only number 2.0 million.
As noted last week, it is entirely possible that most sports viewership figures would look considerably different between the two methodologies. The only reason it is possible to compare the data is because NASCAR has shifted away from reporting “Big Data + Panel” and returned to publicizing its panel-only figures.
In other action, the corresponding O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race on CW averaged 1.12 million on a panel-only basis — up 14% from last year (988K). A “Big Data + Panel” figure for the race had not been publicized.
