Now comes the time when the NASCAR Cup Series ratings begin to freefall.
Last weekend marked the opening of the NFL regular season, with the Cup race at Kansas Speedway smack dab in the middle of the 1 and 4 p.m. ET games. As a result, Cup experienced the lowest ratings of the season so far for a race not impacted by weather.
Only 1.76 million people watched Tyler Reddick steal the win from his 23XI Racing boss Denny Hamlin. For comparison, the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway got 3.26 million viewers. That race was on NBC, though, while the Kansas race was on USA Network.
The most recent race on USA that wasn’t competing against football (including NFL preseason and college) and wasn’t impacted by weather was the second Richmond Raceway race. That race had 2.43 million viewers. That was considered low at the time, but it’s still 700,000 more viewers than Kansas.
NASCAR has always gone against the NFL in the fall; that is nothing new. So NASCAR doesn’t need to try to shorten its season to end before the NFL even starts. That would be nearly impossible. Plus, if you end the NASCAR season too much earlier, the championship race could end up competing with the World Series. So that’s not the answer, even if many would love a slightly shorter season.
The NASCAR ratings will level out a little bit as the NFL season progresses. But NASCAR shouldn’t be putting a race at Kansas up against opening week.
Kansas has some of the best racing now, but the average fan is probably accustomed to the track putting on duds after 20 previous years of snoozers there. Put a track that attracts viewers like Talladega Superspeedway against NFL opening week.
Or better yet, avoid competing against the NFL week one altogether by putting Bristol Motor Speedway that weekend. Yes, then NASCAR would be competing against Saturday night college football games. But college football is not the mammoth the NFL is.
Ratings very much depend on the matchup when it comes to college football, whereas you could schedule any two NFL teams against each other and get good ratings. Depending on the matchup, NASCAR could take some fans from the Saturday night college game. After all, anyone who knows anything about NASCAR is probably a fan of Bristol.
NASCAR ratings have historically trailed off as the season neared the end. But they don’t have to be as bad as they were at Kansas.
One thing is for sure: the NASCAR playoffs have got to get off USA. Who even has cable TV anymore? The amount of cable TV subscribers has dropped by roughly 21 million in the past six years, and that decline doesn’t appear near ending any time soon.
A sports fan is likely to buy a TV package that includes ESPN and probably even FOX Sports 1. But USA? They might not even be aware that channel still exists. If they are, then they probably think it has Law & Order reruns on it 24/7. And hey, they’re not off by much; USA does seem to show Law & Order for all but the eight or so hours of NASCAR coverage each week.
I also don’t think the average fan cares that much about the NASCAR playoffs. At most, there is no way the average fan cares about the playoffs half as much as NASCAR and the media — because it’s too complicated for a casual viewer to keep track of it.
If NASCAR does want fans to care about the playoffs, it can’t hide the opening four races of it on USA. Come out big for the playoffs and put it on NBC. Do that and you’ve got at least a means to compete with the NFL.
Instead, the NTT IndyCar Series was on NBC, going head-to-head against NASCAR. That was a headscratcher.
NASCAR and NBC need to make the playoffs a big deal. To do that, the races need to go on NBC, USA, Peacock and whatever other platforms they have available to them simultaneously. That’s what ESPN does with Monday Night Football, and those are just regular-season games, not playoffs.
Instead, NBC is using NASCAR to drive people to watch USA. And while that may increase the ratings at USA, it’s stunting the growth of the sport beyond the diehards.
NASCAR has a new TV deal coming up soon, and I hope one of the things NASCAR fights for in the next deal is to make all of the playoff races as easy to access as possible for the average sports fan. That’s the only way to truly grow the sport.
Then, if the football games on TV aren’t that good, NASCAR might even steal away some of the NFL’s multitude of fans.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.