NBC on Saturday night drew 5.7 million viewers for NASCAR's Coke Zero 400, marking the most-viewed Sprint Cup Series summer race from Daytona Int'l Speedway since TNT drew 6.03 million viewers in '11. Last year, NBC returned to Cup coverage with the summer Daytona race, but it was marred by a three-hour rain delay, forcing the net to air the event from 11:15pm-2:20am ET. The event in '14 also was rained out on a Saturday night and forced into a shortened race on a Sunday. TNT in '13 drew 5.66 million viewers for the Daytona race in its normal Saturday night window. The race in '12 also suffered from rain issues. The 5.7 million viewers for Saturday's race gave NBC a win in primetime, with the race peaking at 6.5 million viewers from 10:45-11:00pm (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
SEE SPOT RUN: SPORTING NEWS' Tadd Haislop wrote the "NASCAR commercial police on social media didn't get much sleep Saturday night." Critics on Twitter said that "too many ads cut into the race and hindered ability to comprehend the contest." USA Today's Jeff Gluck tweeted, "Check my replies right now if you want to see tweets about commercials. Dang dude." The AP's Jenna Fryer tweeted, "We interrupt this race update for .... COMMERCIALS!" The tweets "came in what seemed like a nonstop flurry" and had "not ceased" by Sunday morning. While this telecast "did seem relatively ad-heavy," that is "not the case." Data from Cawsnjaws.com estimated there were 124 commercials during this year's Coke Zero 400, and there were 143 minutes of race coverage during 190 minutes of the complete race broadcast. That figure is "relatively normal." Another reason for the heavy dose of commercials "might have been short segments of action between commercials." On 11 occasions, NBC "showed five minutes or less of racing between breaks" (SPORTINGNEWS.com, 7/3). ESPN Radio 99.3 Southwest Florida's David Moulton tweeted, "NBC with 2 commercial breaks during green flag racing with under 20 laps left at Daytona. Disgraceful!" Fox Sports' Tom Jensen: "Winners and losers from Saturday night. Spoiler alert: Viewers weren't among the winners."
