{"id":181541,"date":"2025-10-01T03:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T03:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/181541\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T03:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T03:01:08","slug":"answer-to-nascar-ratings-woes-can-be-found-in-xfinity-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/181541\/","title":{"rendered":"Answer To NASCAR Ratings Woes Can Be Found in Xfinity Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s time to blow it all up!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

When the ratings came out for the NASCAR Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last week, the number was shocking. Compared to both last season\u2019s race at New Hampshire and the Cup Series\u2019 fourth race of the playoffs, viewership was down by nearly a third<\/a>. Even by the standards of this season\u2019s viewership, which according to Daily Downforce is down 13% from 2024, it\u2019s a steep drop.<\/p>\n

The story was the same this past weekend at Kansas Speedway, which saw a drop from 1.8 million viewers last season at Kansas to 1.49 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And so NASCAR fans got to indulge in a favorite pastime for any sports fandom outside of the NFL: dissect their sport like a science project and find out why people aren\u2019t watching it anymore.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Xfinity Breakdown: Keeping Up With the Joneses at Kansas<\/p>\n

An unscientific poll from podcast Door, Bumper, Clear<\/a> asked fans why they stopped watching and found the usual suspects. Playoffs suck, the Next Gen sucks, too negative. Star power is what Jeff Gluck of the Athletic<\/a> said is holding back NASCAR in the ratings. It could be the NFL, but is the answer just ending the season on Labor Day Weekend?<\/p>\n

But wait. The ratings are a Cup Series problem, not a NASCAR problem. How do we know? The NASCAR Xfinity Series has flourished.<\/p>\n

When the series debuted on The CW back in February for the season opener at Daytona International Speedway, it drew 1.8 million viewers and was the most watched Xfinity race in three years. The first 13 Xfinity races of the season drew over a million viewers for the first time since 2014 when the series was still on ESPN\u2019s airwaves. Even when college football came to reclaim Saturdays, the series still saw upticks in viewership from last season.<\/p>\n

But the playoffs are the same. There\u2019s certainly not the same star power as the Cup Series. The cars might be different from the Cup Series, but not different from the last few seasons. Why do the ratings surge? One man has the answer, and it\u2019s the guy who\u2019s famously been right on everything the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

On his podcast, Actions Detrimental, Denny Hamlin<\/a> nailed the root issues that NASCAR needs to address. There are a lot of networks to juggle, and some people don\u2019t have access to all of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always just taken the most amount of money,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cIt\u2019s not been about what\u2019s going to put us in the most households. You\u2019re asking a lot of fans to chase you around these different networks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cup Series has had six different channels and\/or streaming networks broadcasting their races. While they\u2019re now set in a more succinct order by round rather than track, that\u2019s still as many networks as Cup races were on in 2000 before NASCAR started handling TV rights directly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d be one thing if those channels were all of equal viewership base, but that\u2019s not the case. Of the NASCAR Cup Series\u2019 39 events, only nine are on a major broadcasting network: five on FOX at the beginning of the year and then four on NBC to finish the season. When the season ends, there will be more SMX World Championship events \u2014 six \u2014 on main NBC than the NASCAR Cup Series.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Couch Potato Tuesday: Kansas Still Playoff Heavy, But with Good Action<\/p>\n

The rest of the year is either on Amazon Prime or one of three other networks that, while large, don\u2019t have the same access to over 114 million households as NBC or FOX. FOX Sports 1 has just 73% of the audience that FOX has. USA Network has just 79% of the audience NBC has \u2014 and it\u2019s worth noting there\u2019s a chance races won\u2019t be on USA next season, as the network and NBCUniversal are splitting at the end of the year. TNT has 78% of the audience both FOX and NBC have.<\/p>\n

The CW\u2019s rollout of the Xfinity Series wasn\u2019t perfect. Some affiliates have prioritized local sports and left fans in select markets high and dry. But it\u2019s in the same spot every weekend with consistent access to a national audience that the Cup Series gets when on FOX and NBC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fox and NBC have, understandably, had other sports taking priority in exposure over NASCAR. FOX gave the NTT IndyCar Series a grand roll-out during the Super Bowl and put each race on mainline FOX. NBC\u2019s main focus has been preparing for its return to the NBA later this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The CW, like new partners Amazon and TNT have, might not have the same cachet as those networks, but it allows NASCAR to be one of its cornerstones alongside college football. It\u2019s advertised plenty on other CW Sports broadcasts. It\u2019s been featured a few times now on one of its premier programs, WWE NXT on Tuesdays.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Having now thrown a lot of numbers at you, it\u2019s important to remember that TV ratings aren\u2019t everything in 2025. There\u2019s plenty of ways to measure a sports influence and popularity beyond who\u2019s watching every week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But if NASCAR wants to bolster its sport, access is the first step. The answer to the Cup Series rating woes can be answered, or at least helped, just by doing what it\u2019s done with the Xfinity Series. Put it on network TV where the most eyes possible can see it.<\/p>\n

\"Donate<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

James Krause joined Frontstretch in March 2024 as a contributor. Krause was born and raised in Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University. He currently works in La Crosse, Wisconsin as a local sports reporter, including local short track racing. Outside of racing, Krause loves to keep up with football, music, anime and video games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time to blow it all up! When the ratings came out for the NASCAR Cup Series race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-181541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}