NASCAR scored a massive $7.7 billion TV rights deal ahead of the 2025 Cup Series season with FOX, NBC, Amazon Prime Video and TNT to cover the 2025-2031 campaigns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The deal may have netted NASCAR<\/a> an eyewatering sum of money,\u00a0 but viewership has remained down<\/a>, perhaps due to a mix of fan confusion about how to stream the product and a general disillusionment with the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was on full display for Sunday’s decisive 2025 Cup Series race in Phoenix<\/a>, in which Kyle Larson<\/a> captured a second title (over competitor Denny Hamlin) despite not leading a single lap.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, 2.77 million tuned in to watch Joey Logano lift a third trophy. Despite the 2025 postseason star power in the form of Larson and Hamlin, viewership dropped 14% to 2.476 million.<\/p>\n Viewership for the Cup Series finale in the NBC era peaked in 2022, when 3.213 million tuned in to watch Logano hoist his second crown.\u00a0<\/p>\n NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps seemed unconcerned. \u201cWhen the season started, because of the distribution changes to be less broadcast heavy and more cable heavy and streaming, we knew we were going to have a reset,\u201d he said ahead of Sunday’s final.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had projected that that reset and told everyone in our industry that reset would be between 14 percent and 15 percent in Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon races performed particularly well, averaging 2.16 million for a five-pack of races from the middle of the year. The Xfinity Series also averaged over one million viewers on the whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think NASCAR and everyone in the industry knew there would be some transition, but we didn\u2019t know what it would be,\u201d driver Brad Keselowski said of the viewership figures. \u201cI think we knew there would be a transition with the viewership habits of our fans.<\/p>\n DON’T MISS:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI will tell you I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of Amazon and streaming races. Conversely, I was disappointed in the races we had on cable and broadcast has not done what we thought it would do.”<\/p>\n Keselowski ended up finishing second on the day to Ryan Blaney, just ahead of Larson in third.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR scored a massive $7.7 billion TV rights deal ahead of the 2025 Cup Series season with FOX,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,2332,634,82,122737,122735,122736],"class_list":{"0":"post-266240","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-motorsport-section","11":"tag-nascar","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-streaming-transition","14":"tag-tv-rights-deal","15":"tag-viewership-decline"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266240","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=266240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}