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Sunday's Daytona 500 Matches Race's Record-Low TV Audience

The Daytona 500 finished with an average of 9.3 million viewers for Sunday afternoon’s race on Fox, matching a record-low figure for NASCAR’s signature event. The ’14 Daytona 500 also averaged 9.3 million viewers, but that race had a six-hour delay in the middle of the telecast, with coverage not finishing until around 11:23pm ET. Both the '18 and '14 races had competition from the Winter Olympics. This year’s race, won by Austin Dillon, is down 22% from ’17, when Kurt Busch won, and down 18% from two years ago, when Denny Hamlin won. This was the first Daytona 500 in years without Dale Earnhardt Jr. Fox' race telecast was still the best non-Olympic TV telecast this past weekend. Fox Sports Go also had an average minute audience of 51,000 viewers for the race on Sunday, up from around 40,000 last year, marking the best figure yet for a NASCAR race on the streaming platform.

DAYTONA 500 AUDIENCE TREND ON FOX
YEAR
RATING
VIEWERS (000)
WINNER
'18^
5.3
9,297
Austin Dillon
'17
6.6
11,922
Kurt Busch
'16
6.6
11,357
Denny Hamlin
'15
7.7
13,363
Joey Logano
'14*^
5.6
9,309
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
'13
9.9
16,700
Jimmie Johnson
NOTES: ^ = Up against Winter Olympics. * = The '14 race had a record-setting delay of 6 hours, 22 minutes. It measured from 1:30-2:17pm, then 8:25-11:23pm ET on Fox.
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Daytona 500 Audience Trend

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