TV News: USA Motorsports Weekend TV Viewers/TV Ratings

NBC received a 1.44 rating with 2.774 million views for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway. The TV viewership was down 4.3% from last year, down 47.7% from the 5.3 million TV viewers who’d packed the airwaves back in 2014.

Martinsville’s Xfinity 500 had drawn 2.35 million just weeks ago, a playoff pulse that felt alive, yet Kansas barely scraped 1.49 million before fading to irrelevance.

Overall, 2025 viewership was down 14% while Formula 1 continues to set new records every race.

For now, NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps says he is not concerned about the drop in viewership, but he’s likely shitting a brick. This is what he expected in year one, he said. That is a joke because the number of NASCAR TV viewers has been in a steady decline for 10 years.

“Because of the distribution changes to be less broadcast heavy and more cable heavy and streaming, we knew we were going to have a reset,” Phelps said last Friday. “Right now, as we sit, our ratings in Cup are down 14%, exactly what we predicted.”