12th event viewership record of F1 season so far as all but two races have seen YoY audience growthNascar sees highest audience for third-last playoff race since Texas 2017
Formula One’s United States Grand Prix has set a domestic TV event record as 1.5 million viewers tuned in to ABC’s race-only portion of the telecast.
This beats the previous record of 1.41 million viewers, which was set back in 2021, and represents a 15 per cent year-on-year (YoY) audience increase on last year’s viewership of 1.3 million.
This is the 12th event viewership record of the season so far, and all but two – Miami and Singapore – have seen YoY audience growth.
Formula One is now averaging 1.32 million viewers through 19 races, which is up considerably on the 1.18 million viewers at the same stage last season.
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Meanwhile, Nascar saw an encouraging audience recovery as 2.56 million viewers watched the playoff race in Talladega, its first race on the main NBC channel since the regular season finale at Daytona.
This is the first playoff race of the season to breach two million viewers, which is a worrying reflection on the postseason format as a whole, but this is the highest audience for the third-last race of the season since Texas in 2017.
It doesn’t quite match the audience of 3.13 million that watched last year’s playoff visit to Talladega, although the event took place three races earlier in 2024.
What will be a relief to Nascar executives is the gap of around one million viewers between the races in Talladega and Austin after five consecutive weekends dropped below that figure.