TV News: USA Motorsports Weekend TV Viewers/TV Ratings

TV viewers for the two big motorsports races telecast in the USA last weekend.  NASCAR was at Talladega for the YellaWood 500 Cup race won by Chase Briscoe and Formula 1 was at COTA for the USGP, won by Max Verstappen.

NASCAR’s TV viewership plummet continues unabated while F1 keeps gaining viewers.

NASCAR

NBC got 2.556 million viewers for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race Talladega per Nielsen Big Data + Panel figures, down 18.2% from last year’s 3.127 million TV viewers but up from 2023.

Formula 1

ABC’s live telecast of Sunday’s Formula 1 United States Grand Prix attracted the largest U.S. television audience on record for the event, as an average of 1.5 million viewers tuned in for the race-only portion of the telecast. The audience was up 14% over last year’s race viewership, based on Nielsen Big Data + Panel data. This despite being head-to-head with the NFL and NASCAR’s Talladega race.

The audience marked the 12th event viewership record set this season in 19 F1 races, with all but two of the 19 experiencing year-over-year audience growth. Viewership peaked at 1.6 million between 4:15-4:30 p.m. as Max Verstappen drove to victory, further tightening up the battle for the F1 driver’s championship with only five races left in the season.

The race telecast, which ran from 3-4:45 p.m. ET, also attracted 539,000 average viewers in the Persons ages 18-49 demographic, an increase of 10 percent over last year’s race.

All but two races this season (Miami, Singapore) have seen year-over-year viewership increases and 12 of the 19 (Australia, China, Monaco, Spain, Canada, Austria, Great Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Azerbaijan, USGP) scored event record audiences.

Across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, F1 races are averaging 1.3 million viewers, ahead of the all-time U.S. television record average of 1.21 million that was set in 2022.