While NASCAR reintroduced its final stretch run, The Chase, to rekindle postseason interest, viewership for the races has remained lackluster.

Over six races, the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Chase averages 1.62 million viewers, up just 1% year over year (1.61 million), per NASCAR Communications. So far, The Chase hasn’t delivered the viewership renaissance NASCAR hoped for.

Last Sunday’s Cup Series race at Charlotte drew 1.48 million viewers on USA Network, down 15% year over year from the Charlotte Roval (1.8 million). That is the sharpest year-over-year drop of any race in this year’s Chase, as all the others have changed by single digits.

.@USANetwork got a 0.82 rating and 1.480 million viewers for Sunday’s Bank of America 400 @CLTMotorSpdwy, flat in rating (0.82) but down in viewership (1.8 million) from the Roval last year, per Nielsen’s Big Data formula.

➡️ The Kyle Busch tribute got 193,000 viewers on FS1. https://t.co/Bjbc8C3bC4

— Adam Stern (@A_S12) October 15, 2026

Is The Chase just a Band-Aid slapped onto a larger problem?

One common denominator in this year’s Chase and the 2025 playoffs stands out: the first seven races are exclusively on cable, with USA Network carrying all the broadcasts. It may maximize revenue for the sport, but it isn’t setting the Cup Series up for success against the NFL’s most-watched window of the week.

Audiences drawing fewer than 2.0 million viewers for what should be the biggest part of the Cup Series calendar simply isn’t good enough or sustainable for the sport. Even Prime Video’s summer schedule averaged more viewers than the first six races of The Chase (2.29 million vs. 1.62 million).

Something needs to change.

Last month, NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Ben Kennedy appeared on Sports Business Journal’s Sports Media Podcast with Austin Karp. Kennedy raised a question about the sport’s future scheduling: “As we think about 2032 inventory — start dates, end dates — frankly, should we be going up against the NFL at this point of the year on every single Sunday?”

NASCAR is only in Year 2 of its 7-year media deals, but as COO Ben Kennedy notes, they’ll be auditioning again soon.

“As we think about 2032 inventory — start dates, end dates — frankly, should we be going up against the NFL at this point of the year on every single Sunday?” https://t.co/y6cNHNVQPC

— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) September 17, 2026

NASCAR isn’t the only sport that has to schedule around the NFL. In 2022, MLB moved the World Series from its traditional midweek start to a Friday start, ultimately eliminating Sunday World Series games that had directly competed with Sunday Night Football. This also added more Friday and Saturday World Series games, an option NASCAR would need to consider if it pursued a similar strategy.

Similarly, in 2019, the PGA Tour revised its FedEx Cup Playoffs schedule to conclude before the NFL season kicked off. Another U.S. motorsports series, IndyCar, has also adjusted its schedule in recent years to avoid competing with the NFL.

Ideally, NASCAR would have been better off not prioritizing short-term revenue over reach in the current television deal and keeping the vast majority of its playoffs on broadcast television. More sports than ever are airing on free, over-the-air TV. Even Mountain West football and basketball get dozens of windows on The CW. Motorsport brethren IndyCar airs its entire schedule on Fox to maximize viewership.

NASCAR’s decision to prioritize revenue and rely so heavily on cable, rather than broadcast television, for a deal that runs through the 2031 season has already proven costly.

As an alternative, NASCAR aired midweek races during the 2020 COVID season to complete a full 36-race schedule. Viewership didn’t reach the same levels as weekend races, but the three non-delayed midweek races averaged 1.77 million cable viewers, above this season’s current Chase average.

Television has also changed significantly in those six years. Sports on broadcast television during the workweek are no longer a foreign concept. Fox has a Friday-night sports window, which just aired a NASCAR Truck Series race at Charlotte last weekend that averaged 838,000 viewers. NBC has NBA Tuesdays, and Fox occasionally airs MLB games on Thursdays. However, this would be a major shift for NASCAR, a sport closely associated with Sundays.

The ideal scenario for NASCAR would be for Fox to take over inventory currently split by USA Network and NBC. That would let NASCAR put select races in Fox’s Friday-night window. Additionally, Fox could use NASCAR to lead into its 1 p.m. NFL games when the network doesn’t have the national 4:25 p.m. ET Game of the Week. Fox has done this several times with the NHRA, which already gives NASCAR a model to consider.

For now, though, until 2032 rolls around and NASCAR negotiates another media deal, the sport and its fans are left dealing with the consequences of a deal that prioritized squeezing every penny out of its inventory rather than maximizing accessibility for fans.

While The Chase may be a better format and more loved by fans, it will not solve NASCAR’s glaring, much larger issue: its reliance on cable.