Multiple new events on Fox' portion of the Cup Series schedule include its first visit to COTAGETTY IMAGES
Fox Sports is bullish on NASCAR ratings this year after a stable ’20 and a multitude of compelling storylines heading into ’21. The net saw audiences essentially remain flat during a volatile first half of the campaign that included a two-month layoff due to the pandemic. Fox Exec VP and Head of Strategy & Analytics Mike Mulvihill said, “I do think that 2020 was maybe a year of reinvention for NASCAR and that they stepped up at every point where they had an opportunity to be leaders in sports business, whether it was getting iRacing content going as quickly as they did or getting back to competition, getting back to having fans in venues. Every league in our business met the challenges of last year in their own way, but nobody did it better than NASCAR and that has created a lot of positive momentum going into the year.” There are multiple new events on Fox’ portion of the Cup Series schedule. That includes the first Cup race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin as well as the Bristol dirt race, the Cup Series’ first race on dirt in decades. Mulvihill said he is particularly confident that the novel dirt race should attract heightened attention. Fox also has a new member of its NASCAR booth this year in former driver Clint Bowyer, but Mulvihill said it is too much to expect talent to grow ratings single-handedly.
PRACTICE IMPERFECT: The pandemic has dictated that there will only be practice and qualifying for a handful of events this year. While some in the industry are seeing a more streamlined weekend as a positive, Mulvihill noted that people should keep in mind how valuable that content is to Fox Sports. That situation bears watching as NASCAR will have to decide in '22 whether to go back to a more normal three-day schedule or maintain a mostly one-day show lineup. “We definitely do value practice and qualifying as FS1 content,” Mulvihill said. “It rates at a level that really makes it important for us. I can’t speak to the way the teams or drivers think about thing. But just as a media partner, we don’t take that content lightly at all. It has a lot of importance for us and we want to have as much volume of practice and qualifying as we can have.”
