IndyCar St. Petersburg TV Rating

UPDATE #2 It was also the second-best season opener for NBC Sports Network's IZOD IndyCar Series coverage behind the 2010 race from Sao Paulo, Brazil (411,000). Unfortunately NASCAR 2nd and 3rd tier support series – Nationwide and Trucks get 3 to 5 times more viewers. The Cup series gets 19 times more viewers per race. So any NASCAR marketing rep, or NASCAR team marketing rep can walk into the IndyCar paddock and make a compelling case for spending their sponsorship dollars in NASCAR instead.

If there were to be an all-out assault on IndyCar sponsors by the NASCAR fraternity, all the IndyCars would end up with near-zero sponsors. Hence why we have been saying that even this big increase in the St. Pete rating to 0.26 is still pathetic and leaves IndyCar vulnerable to a fatal gouging of its sponsors. We are not criticizing NBC Sports Network production of the race, it is good, but if the channel cannot produce ratings needed to survive, it must go. Has anyone at IndyCar done this risk analysis?

03/26/13 The final TV rating for Sunday's IndyCar race from St. Petersburg was a 0.26 with 388,000 viewers. The rating is up 53% and the number of viewers is up 78% from 2012 (218,000) per NBC Sports network. Still pathetic numbers when you figure NASCAR gets around 7.5 million viewers per telecast, but at lease it is a small step in the right direction.

03/26/13 The IndyCar overnight TV Rating on NBC Sports network was a 0.26, up 53 percent over last year’s 0.17 overnight. While that's not necessarily good, it’s a lot better than Fontana and Baltimore were last year. Also, the overnight for the NBCSN debut in 2012 at Barber was a 0.18.