TV News: Weekend USA Motorsports TV Viewers/TV Ratings (Update)

Apple‘s deal with Formula 1 is only one Grand Prix in, but the tech giant is bullish on what it has seen so far.

In a sign of strength for the streaming platform, Apple’s senior VP of services Eddy Cue tells The Hollywood Reporter that viewership for last week’s Australian Grand Prix was up year over year compared to the 2025 race, which aired on ESPN.

“The 2026 Formula 1 season on Apple TV is off to a strong start, with fans responding positively and viewership up year over year for the first weekend, exceeding both F1 and Apple expectations,” Cue says.

As is typical for Apple, the company declined to give any specific numbers, though last year’s Australian GP averaged 1.1 million viewers for ESPN. The Australian GP is something of an unusual race, given its late-night timeslot, but any ratings improvement is nonetheless an encouraging sign, especially with more U.S.-friendly races like Montreal and Miami coming up.

Viewership for F1’s season opener on Apple TV is unknown, but downloads for the streaming service more than tripled their daily average last weekend, at least on Android devices, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower reports Sports Business Journal.

On Saturday, Apple TV’s daily active users increased 58% from the prior day, Sensor Tower told SBJ. Its data also showed that, on the day of the race, U.S. downloads were up 243% and daily active users were up 176% when compared to the prior 30 days on the platform.

Fox TV got 2.841 million TV Viewers for the NASCAR Cup race at Phoenix Raceway last Sunday, up 19% from 2.389 million last year but that race was on FS1. The race peaked at 3.516 million viewers between 7:00 and 7:15 pm ET.

Fox TV got 1.247 million viewers for Saturday’s NTT IndyCar Series race Phoenix Raceway, down 6.6% from the 1.335 million TV viewers that tuned in for the season opening in St. Petersburg, FL the previous weekend. The race peaked at 1.468 million viewers from 5:00 to 5:14pm ET.  The viewership was up 391% from the last Phoenix IndyCar (254,000) in 2018 on the NBC Sports Network.

As of March 10, 2026, Apple has not published official viewership numbers for its first Formula 1 broadcast – the Australian GP. This is standard for Apple, which has historically kept specific audience data for its sports properties, like MLS Season Pass, private. We will update this article if Apple puts out some numbers.