After a rare increase at Michigan, NASCAR ratings fell back to reality last weekend.
Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Sonoma 350 earned a 1.4 rating and 2.3 million viewers on FS1, down 30% in ratings and 28% in viewership from last year (2.0, 3.2M) and down 42% and 40% respectively from 2016 (2.4, 3.9M).
Martin Truex Jr.’s win ranks as the lowest rated edition of the race since at least 1998 and the least-watched since at least 2002.
Ratings and viewership were the second-lowest of the season, ahead of only Kansas on FS1 last month (1.2, 2.0M).
All but one Cup Series race this season has declined double-digits to a multi-year low. The exception was Michigan earlier this month, which moved up from FS1 to the FOX broadcast network.
Not helping matters this week was direct competition from the FIFA World Cup on FOX and Telemundo. Sunday’s race overlapped with the Poland-Colombia match on FOX (4.4M) and Telemundo (3.5M).* While the World Cup has had a mostly positive impact on Fox Sports’ other properties, that halo effect unsurprisingly dissipates in head-to-head competition.
The last time the race faced the World Cup four years ago, ratings and viewership were twice as high — a 2.8 and 4.7 million on TNT. Just six years ago, the race had a 3.3 and 5.2 million. A decade ago, it had a 3.7 and 6.0 million.
Sonoma was the sixth Cup Series race this season with less than a 2.0 rating (excludes rainouts), compared to two at the same point last year.
Sunday marked the end of Fox Sports’ Cup Series season, with NBC set to take over this weekend. According to Sports Business Journal writer Adam Stern, FOX and FS1 averaged 3.98 million viewers for Cup Series races this season, down 19% from last year (4.90M).
* FOX World Cup figures include pre-match coverage, Telemundo figures do not.
UPDATE 7/3: Corrected Fox Sports’ 2018 season averages.
