Sports Ratings Tracker

Last weekend’s IndyCar Series race from Toronto averaged a 0.52 rating and 913,000 viewers on FOX, up 24% from last year (734K), and also up sharply from the previous week’s race at Portland (677K).

IndyCar Series racing is averaging 1.73 million viewers this season, up 16% from last year (1.49M), outside the range one would generally attribute to Nielsen’s shift to “Big Data + Panel” methodology.

Last weekend’s IndyCar Series race from Portland International Speedway averaged a 0.37 rating and 677,000 viewers on FOX, down from last year (708K).

Viewership also trailed the previous IndyCar race from Nashville, which averaged 775,000 on a Monday afternoon after being postponed from its scheduled Sunday start — which would have immediately followed the FIFA World Cup Final.

Benefitting from a FIFA World Cup lead-in, last weekend’s NHRA Nationals from Norwalk (Ohio) averaged a 0.8 rating and 1.47 million viewers on FOX — the sixth-largest audience on record for an NHRA event. The telecast, which peaked with 2.7 million viewers, more-than-doubled last year’s Norwalk event.

The NHRA was the second motorsports event in as many weeks to benefit from a World Cup lead-in. The previous weekend, IndyCar from Road America averaged 1.80 million on FOX — up 131% from last year and the largest IndyCar audience outside of the Indy 500 since 2011.

Sunday’s IndyCar race from Detroit averaged 1.17 million viewers on FOX, up 10% from last year (1.06M) and the highest average for IndyCar at the venue since 2021, when coverage on NBC ran in a truncated telecast window due to French Open overrun.

Excluding that anomalous circumstance, it was the most-watched Detroit race since 2016 (1.40M).

Note that changes in Nielsen methodology skew comparisons to past years, particularly those prior to 2020, when the company began including out-of-home viewing in its estimates for the first time.

Including the Indy 500, FOX IndyCar races are averaging 2.24 million viewers, up 12% from last year (2.01M). That is officially the highest average at this point of the season since 2008, with the above caveats in mind.

IndyCar Series races are averaging 1.33 million viewers on FOX to start the season, up 48% from the first three races of last season (895K), including an audience of 1.34 million for this past weekend’s race from Arlington, Texas. Last year’s third race, Long Beach in April, averaged 552,000.

The increases are well beyond the range that would be explained by changes in Nielsen methodology.

Last weekend’s IndyCar Series opener from St. Petersburg averaged a 0.8 rating and 1.40 million viewers on FOX, down slightly from last year’s opener, which marked IndyCar’s FOX debut (1.42M).