The sport’s first race back, The Real Heroes 400 at Darlington in May, had more than 6 million viewers.getty images
Given the many challenges thrown their way, Fox Sports and NASCAR are pleased that the first half of the 2020 Cup Series season ended down only 1% in viewership.
Citing Nielsen data, Fox Sports says that it earned 3.702 million viewers for its portion of the 2020 season, down 30,000 viewers from the 3.732 million last year. However, that comes despite eight of 16 races being affected or delayed by weather, including rainouts at two of the most important races, the Daytona 500 and the spring Talladega race, and some scheduled on weeknights.
Fox earned 10.935 million viewers for the 20 laps of the Daytona 500 before it was postponed to a Monday, up 19% from the prior year. That Monday race ended up getting 7.026 million viewers, and Fox and NASCAR executives both agree that if the race hadn’t gotten rained out, the series would have been up nicely for this season.
This was Fox Sports’ 20th season carrying NASCAR. Its current deal runs through 2024.
“[The glass is] more than half full — I really think that this is the most important NASCAR season we’ve had since the inaugural year in 2001,” said Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ executive vice president and head of strategy and analytics. “On a variety of fronts, NASCAR kind of reasserted its position in the national sports conversation.”
Even though it wasn’t included in the season ratings, Mulvihill pointed to what NASCAR did with quickly transitioning to iRacing when the pandemic started in mid-March as an example of how he felt the sport stepped up for his network. He said iRacing “was really innovative and invaluable to us.” The races averaged more than 1 million viewers and finished with six events ranking as the most-watched esports TV broadcasts in U.S. history.
“I don’t think you can overstate how acute our need was for original programming at that time,” he said. “It feels like years ago — although it was only three or four months ago — but I think it’s fair to say it was the most challenging time in our history. At a moment where we faced our most serious challenges ever, NASCAR stepped up and got us through those weeks like no other.”
NASCAR was one of the first sports to return to action after the pandemic reached the U.S., when it restarted its campaign at Darlington Raceway in mid-May. While that race, The Real Heroes 400, got big numbers — a 3.7 rating and 6.323 million viewers — ratings started to normalize after that.
Brian Herbst, NASCAR’s senior vice president of media and productions, noted that NASCAR was down 10% for the season before the pandemic started (largely because of the Daytona 500 rainout), so it shows how strongly the sport closed that gap to finish down only 1%.
“Super pleased on a number on fronts,” he said. “I thought it was a minor miracle to get back as quickly as we could at Darlington. I would say the Fox relationship from the time we shut down in Atlanta [in mid-March] through [last week] has grown leaps and bounds.”
