{"id":487613,"date":"2026-02-20T12:21:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/487613\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T12:21:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:21:26","slug":"daytona-500-viewership-a-huge-win-for-nascar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/487613\/","title":{"rendered":"Daytona 500 viewership a huge win for NASCAR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nascar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NASCAR\u00a0<\/a>has TV ratings momentum going into the second race weekend of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Daytona 500 on Feb. 15 averaged 7.489 million viewers on Fox and peaked at 9.154 million during the race&#8217;s closing laps, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FOXSports\/status\/2024544666406801653?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">per Fox Sports.<\/a> Those numbers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nascar\/articles\/nascar_truck_series_race_at_daytona_was_series_most_watched_race_since_2016\/s1_13132_43488359\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">follow\u00a0<\/a>a NASCAR Truck Series race on Feb. 13 (1.387 million viewers on FS1) that was the series&#8217; most-watched race since 2016 and a Feb. 14 NASCAR O&#8217;Reilly Auto Parts Series race that drew in 1.812 million viewers on the CW.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 2026 Daytona 500 was the most-watched iteration of the race since 2023 (8.173 million viewers) and saw an 11 percent increase in viewership compared to the 6.761 million that watched a mostly delayed 2025 running.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDaytona 500 viewership could be momentum boost for NASCAR<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR will look to capitalize on its Daytona momentum with this weekend&#8217;s races at EchoPark Speedway in Hampton, Ga. The 2025 EchoPark spring race drew 4.586 million viewers on Fox, and with a new championship format, more mainstream coverage due to Michael Jordan&#8217;s involvement in the Daytona 500 and solid Daytona 500 viewership numbers, it&#8217;s not out of the realm of possibility that NASCAR meets or exceeds five million viewers for Sunday&#8217;s Autotrader 400 (3 p.m. ET, Fox).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>All in all, NASCAR has plenty of momentum behind it as it begins a new era and tries to cater to a wider audience of fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR\u00a0has TV ratings momentum going into the second race weekend of the season.\u00a0 The Daytona 500 on Feb.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-487613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487613","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=487613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}