What’s Happening?

The NASCAR Cup Series made its debut on Prime Video this weekend, officially ending the NASCAR on FOX portion of the schedule. So, how did FOX do compared to last year? Here’s a deep look into the numbers that FOX scored for NASCAR Coverage in 2025.

• The 2025 season was FOX’s 25th year of NASCAR Cup Series coverage; though it is the most tenured of NASCAR’s broadcast partners, the network has its fair share of haters. This can be chalked up to its graphics, commentary, or overall presentation.
• Though FOX’s season began as usual, several changes were made to its schedule. Most notably, the network reduced its coverage from 19 events to just 15, with the end coming at the North Wilkesboro All-Star race rather than Sonoma. We will adjust accordingly for this, keeping averages in mind, as this decrease will affect the overall numbers.
• Another notable change to keep in mind is the decrease in network races on “Big FOX.” Last season, ten events occurred on FOX, with nine on FS1. This year, those numbers dropped to five events on FOX and ten on FS1.
• Our data comes from our 2025 NASCAR TV Ratings Tracker, which can be found via the link below.

The Complete 2025 NASCAR TV Ratings Tracker

The Complete 2025 NASCAR TV Ratings Tracker

What’s Happening? Throughout every NASCAR season, NASCAR fans often use TV viewership to gauge how interested the broader sports world is…

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The Numbers Through the First 15 Events of 2024 and 2025

All Races (15 Total in 2025): Including The Clash, Daytona Duels, and the All-Star Race

• 2025 Total/Average Viewership to Date: 46.568 Million/3.105 Million Per Race
• 2024 Total/Average Viewership to Date: 48.555 Million/3.237 Million Per Race
• Total Viewership Difference (2025 vs 2024): -1.987 Million (-4.092%)
• Average Viewership Difference (2025 vs 2024): -0.132 Million (-4.092%)

Overall Final Viewership

Overall, NASCAR on FOX saw a drop in total viewership in 2025 compared to 2024, of course, thanks to the factors listed above. Keep in mind that the 2024 stats cover 19 events, while the 2025 stats cover 15 events, per the new NASCAR media rights deal.

The overall changes to the schedule, combined with the changes to the race location, such as several races being moved to cable network FS1, created several variables that cannot be overcome when comparing the numbers to 2024.

However, when such factors are in play, a look at the average viewership between two seasons becomes extremely valuable. However, looking at these averages for the two varying schedules, average viewership dropped from 3.139 million in 2024 to 3.105 million in 2025.

Averages are also important to see how changes from the new TV deal affected average viewership on network and cable broadcasts. One again, this portion of the schedule also saw major changes from last season.

Fortunately for FOX, both the average cable and network TV viewership rose in 2025. This means that even with the major changes to the network’s schedule, FOX saw an increase in average viewers from 2024 to 2025 on both FOX and FS1, despite the varying number of races on each network. This increase includes a significant 12.435% boost in viewers for FS1’s increased number of races for this season.

The Highs and The Lows

Below are some of the superlatives from the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Schedule on FOX. These are the races that did exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly, depending on certain factors.

This should be no surprise as despite a rain delay, the Daytona 500, often deemed the most important race of the year, always blows away the rest of the field. On the other hand, there are the Thursday night qualifiers for the 500.

These races, often very low stakes for the season, are exhibition races that set the field for the main event. While they were the lowest-viewed event on FOX this season, they did rise as well. With the duels up
0.196 million viewers, or 11.951% from the 2024 races.

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