Despite NASCAR securing a landmark $7.7 billion media rights deal with FOX, Amazon, and Warner Bros. Discovery, the sport continues to tread perilous waters when it comes to viewership. Ratings continued to slide, reigniting fan criticism of the playoff format.
The New Hampshire feature drew just 1.29 million viewers, a steep drop from 1.88 million last year, and even the 2025 Championship Finale at Phoenix couldn’t stop the downward trend. The latest numbers from Phoenix only underscore how serious the issue has become, marking a new low that is even lower than the 2024 figures.
Have Viewers Lost Faith in NASCAR’s Championship Format? Phoenix’s startling viewership revealed
Capping off the season, the championship race at Phoenix Raceway attracted 2.77 million viewers on NBC, a slight dip from the 2.9 million who tuned in for the same event last year. In 2024, the series averaged 2.892 million viewers, marking a modest 1% rise from 2023. But this year’s average dropped to just 2.476 million, underscoring a clear downward turn for NASCAR’s flagship division.
However, surprisingly, Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s President, isn’t too concerned about the declining numbers. In fact, the commissioner acknowledged that the downturn was largely anticipated, noting that internal forecasts had already accounted for the impact of shifting several races from network broadcasts to cable, along with the five events streamed exclusively on Amazon’s Prime Sports.
Sharing the troubling statistic on social media, Jeff Gluck of The Athletic added important context, highlighting how viewership has steadily declined since the introduction of NASCAR’s “one-race championship” format. He noted,
“Phoenix got 2.77 million viewers on NBC, down from 2.9 million last year. While this is a wildly different viewership era of NASCAR, the first one-race championship (2014) drew 5.2 million viewers and the playoff average that year for the 10 races was 4.4 million.”
The 2025 season finale delivered high drama right to the end, but for many fans, it ended in heartbreak. What began as a thrilling showdown turned anticlimactic when Kyle Larson stole the title from championship favorite Denny Hamlin in the final laps.
In contrast, the Xfinity Series offered a rare bright spot for NASCAR‘s television outlook. Its full-season shift to The CW Network paid off, delivering the series’ strongest ratings in four years with an average of 1.034 million viewers, a 10% boost from 2024.
Even the season finale held firm against heavy competition from college football and Game 7 of the World Series, attracting 1.015 million viewers and underscoring the potential impact of broader broadcast exposure.
Phelps reflected that the Xfinity Series outperformed expectations, surpassing what many experts predicted for its audience reach. He added that Amazon’s broadcasts attracted a noticeably younger demographic, about six years younger on average, while praising the consistently high production quality delivered by FOX and NBC.