TNT finishes five-race run with  average viewership of 2.06m F1 now averaging 1.37m viewers through 2025 season, overtaking IndyCar (1.27m viewers)

Nascar has closed its five-race run on TNT Sports with 2.45 million viewers at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS).

That represents a year-over-year (YoY) audience decrease of 32.5 per cent but last year’s Brickyard 400 aired on NBC, which makes for a slightly skewed comparison.

In fact, last weekend’s race at IMS was the highest audience achieved by TNT in its five-race package, bringing its average viewership to 2.06 million for the full run. This falls just below the 2.1 million average viewers on Prime Video, but it is clear that both of Nascar’s new broadcast partners have brought similar levels of performance.

Notably, these new partners have been a hit with younger audiences and TNT continued that trend last weekend. Viewers between the ages of 18 and 34 increased 96 per cent compared to the 2024 Cup Series average on cable.

The 2025 Nascar Cup Series season is now averaging 2.75 million viewers in the US through 22 regular season races.

Nascar was the best-performing motorsport property last weekend on the US viewership front, although Formula One did manage an average viewership of 1.4 million for the race-only portion of the Belgian Grand Prix on ESPN.

That said, Nascar’s news release confirming its own average viewership last weekend also points out that Formula One averaged 1.08 million viewers for the full broadcast (which contained an 80-minute rain delay). This is not the first time Nascar has pulled that move this season.

Nascar is evidently mindful about Formula One’s viewership gains, especially as the Belgian Grand Prix on ESPN represents a 27.3 per cent YoY increase on last year’s edition. Since the Formula One season started, Nascar is averaging 2.32 million viewers per race compared to Formula One’s 1.37 million viewers.

Elsewhere, IndyCar continues to struggle with the increased competition across the board as 734,000 viewers tuned in on Fox for Álex Palou’s eighth win of the season at Laguna Seca.

Palou’s historic season may be contributing to a degree of audience apathy, but IndyCar failing to exceed one million viewers for six consecutive races on commercial television points to a disappointing return.

However, this year’s Laguna Seca viewership is a 301 per cent increase on last year’s race, which only recorded 183,000 viewers on CNBC. It is also the highest audience recorded at Laguna Seca since it returned to the IndyCar schedule in 2019.

IndyCar is now averaging 1.27 million viewers through 14 races.

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