{"id":678562,"date":"2026-05-19T00:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T00:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/678562\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T00:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T00:32:08","slug":"nascar-will-be-returning-to-the-old-panel-vs-panel-comparisons-and-likely-for-the-rest-of-the-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/678562\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR will be returning to the old panel vs. panel comparisons \u2013 and likely for the rest of the season."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">Serving as Exhibit A that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/sb-blogs\/newsletter-media\/2025\/08\/25\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/sb-blogs\/newsletter-media\/2025\/08\/25\/\">Nielsen Big Data<\/a> is not a panacea for sports is NASCAR Cup Series coverage this season. Both sides are working through issues related to NASCAR\u2019s data sets, and with that, NASCAR will be returning to the old panel vs. panel comparisons \u2014 and likely for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">The move came after a deep dive into the data, particularly around select demographics and metered markets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">It\u2019s a decision that shifts narratives around Fox\u2019s just-wrapped season of races. With Big Data vs. panel last year, Fox and FS1, averaging 3.3 million viewers, were down 1% for their points races (even after an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/02\/19\/daytona-500-up-but-early-start-hinders-fox-audience\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">11% jump for the Daytona 500<\/a>). But panel-to-panel, NASCAR would be up 1% for Fox Sports, which would have averaged 3.4 million viewers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">\u201cWe\u2019re going to move to just to make it as apples-to-apples as possible for the balance of the year,\u201d said Brian Herbst, NASCAR\u2019s EVP and chief media and revenue officer. \u201cIt\u2019s more stable. &#8230; We are in active conversations with Nielsen on future methodology changes, particularly what\u2019s rolling out end of August, beginning of September, with impact data, which we think will more accurately reflect kind of the audience measurement of our sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">Looking down a level, the NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series on the CW is up 6% to date (1.3 million average viewers), while the Craftsman Truck Series is up 19% on Fox\/FS1 (667,000 viewers) as it has taken advantage of better weather this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serving as Exhibit A that Nielsen Big Data is not a panacea for sports is NASCAR Cup Series&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,36805,634,35915,82],"class_list":["post-678562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fox-sports","tag-nascar","tag-nielsen","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678562","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=678562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}