NASCAR’s new TV deal delivered falling ratings for the sport’s premier Cup Series in 2025 - but the brass in Charlotte do not seem concerned at all.
The landmark pact which began this year and runs through 2031 will see NASCAR profit to the tune of $7.7bn over the term of the deal. Pretty nice work, but it does come with a catch.
As part of the new agreement, the number of races carried on NBC for example was cut to just four in 2025. With a number of races offloaded to the smaller USA network.
The ratings (unsurprisingly) suffered, particularly for races which aired on USA and not NBC towards the end of the season as the Cup Series playoff race really ramped up.
NBC vs USA brings big drops
For example, the playoff showdown at the Charlotte Roval in early October pulled in 1.544m viewers on USA network, as opposed to 2.419m on NBC in 2024. A massive drop.
It was a familiar story, one which had superstar driver Denny Hamlin among others questioning the wisdom of the new rights deal.
“Just not good. I don’t know. We [NASCAR] signed the deal that we signed,” he explained.
“We obviously lost a significant amount of network races in this TV deal. You know, in each one of the TV deals that we’ve signed over the last few years, or the past few agreements that we’ve had, we’ve always just taken the most amount of money. You know what I mean?
"It’s not been about what’s going to put us in the most households. You know, we were guinea pigs to get channel X off the ground, channel Y off the ground.”
Not surprisingly the topic of TV ratings continued to be a hot topic right through to the end of the Cup Series season, and it reared its ugly head again during Championship weekend in Phoenix.
NASCAR expected TV ratings ‘reset’
NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps was asked about the figures, but if you expected him to sound in any way concerned, you would be disappointed.
He explained: “When the season started, with the distribution changes, to be less broadcast-heavy and more cable-heavy in streaming, we knew we were gonna have a reset. And we had projected that reset and told everyone in our industry that reset would be between 14 and 15 percent in Cup.
“We also told them we would probably have a double-digit increase on Xfinity. And then Trucks would be where Trucks are because the distribution stayed the same primarily on FS1 and some FOX.
“So right now as we sit our ratings from Cup are down 14 percent - exactly what we projected.
“So I think the FOX portion of the season was really strong in terms of how they did from a ratings perspective. I think that Xfinity exceeded a lot of expert’s opinions about what their audience would be.
“We surmised that the audience makeup of Amazon would be younger - and it was by about six years.
“And then the production value that FOX and NBC have had traditionally, amazing. Everyone just raised their game. Amazon’s production was tremendous, Turner Sports was tremendous, NBC already had a high bar.
“The Turner numbers were slightly softer than we thought they would be - slightly - but in line with the projections. I would say the cable portion of the NBC package has been a little softer than we had expected. Bounce-back on the NBC races.”
So what happens next? Phelps predicts
So now the reset has happened, what does Phelps expect for 2026 and beyond? He believes the future is bright despite the naysayers.
“The expectation moving forward, now that we have had the reset, is that we are going to grow. And we are going to grow because we have the best racing in the world, our stars are going to be more out there, we’re creating better content. All the things that make fandom.
“So again, are we concerned about where the ratings are? No, it’s exactly where we thought they’d be.”
