Everything We Know About NASCAR on TV In 2025
What’s Happening? The 2025 NASCAR season will look quite different to many fans than any other. Two brand new TV…
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In the wake of NASCAR Race Hub’s final show, many fans wonder what the future of NASCAR content looks like, particularly on television. In a recent episode of the Dale Jr. Download, while talking about the future of NASCAR media content, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said that he wants NASCAR to have its’ own channel, but would it work?
To see if a TV channel like Dale Earnhard Jr. is suggesting will work, it’s important to analyze the current media landscape.
As sad as it was to see Race Hub go, especially for those who worked so hard on the show daily, this is ultimately the product of a changing landscape. The content that Race Hub provides is simply available through more streamlined platforms. If you want to watch Radioactive or any Race Hub features, they are usually uploaded to YouTube or other related social media channels.
Not to mention news stories. With the rise of social media, news isn’t broken in the same way it once was. Fans don’t have to wait until Race Hub that night or read the newspaper the next day to see the big news stories surrounding NASCAR.
Reporters on social media, such as Bob Pockrass, Jeff Gluck, Jordan Bianchi, and others, break the news through social posts, and they can also respond to fan questions in real-time, as in the Bob Pockrass tweet below.
These same individuals often break news through podcasts as well. This allows fans to hear multiple takes on a subject while also getting some insight into where everything is going with whatever the news story of the day is.
If these tweets or stories get lost in the shuffle, that’s where NASCAR News YouTubers often come in. YouTubers like Eric Estepp can compile all of the day’s major news stories and package them for fans to consume whenever they want.
We already mentioned podcasts with reporters, but there are also podcasts featuring current and former NASCAR drivers. This allows fans to get access to who these drivers are, and, being inside the lines, the drivers often have insight that others do not have.
That said, content from something like NASCAR Race Hub, such as access to drives, breaking news, and special segments, is more easily accessible in different forms. Fans no longer have to wait until 6 PM ET on a weeknight to get their daily hour of NASCAR content. This doesn’t make the show bad; it just doesn’t hold the same value in a modern media landscape.
The results are shown in Race Hub’s viewership figures. According to USTVDB.com, between late March 2022 and early May 2024, Race Hub garnered around 200,000 viewers per show.
This is not the only show to suffer the same fate. The NFL Network’s daily news show, NFL Total Access, was also canceled this year.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. suggested that NASCAR create a dedicated TV channel so that NASCAR content is always available. If it’s completely produced by NASCAR itself, then maybe it could work, but, as we just showed, traditional media through TV does not hold the same power it once did.
Where the value of a sports TV show or a sports TV channel often comes not through the channels themselves but through the traffic it creates online. For example, Fox Sports shows UNDISPUTED and The Herd with Colin Cowherd each have more than 1 million subscribers on YouTube, and that’s how most fans consume that content nowadays.
That leads us to wonder: Is it worth it to start a dedicated TV channel when much of the content on the channel can be accessed through other mediums? Dale Earnhardt Jr. mentioned broadcasting classic races, but NASCAR Classics now exists, with many classic NASCAR races available for free. All other things mentioned in the above section are also available for free.
Is it better for NASCAR to spend a lot of money trying to produce traditional television content or to focus on creating content for the larger online audience, so they can consume it how or when they want? Maybe NASCAR could put together some streaming service like the NFL does with NFL+, where fans can stream locally and nationally televised games, NFL Red Zone, and other exclusive content. Maybe that could work, but given the new TV contract starting in 2025, NASCAR may not be able to stream races on a platform like this. However, it could give fans a place to access content that NASCAR itself creates.
What’s Happening? The 2025 NASCAR season will look quite different to many fans than any other. Two brand new TV…
Maybe a traditional TV channel isn’t the best option, but this could be an opportunity for NASCAR to push its content through other avenues. What do you think about all this? Let us know on Discord or X what your take is, and don’t forget you can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and even YouTube.
