With Chase Elliott out of the race and Danica Patrick replacing Tony Stewart in the broadcast booth, Fox lost half a million viewers compared to the same race in 2022.
What You Need to Know:
The NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway averaged 3.991 million average viewers on FOX last weekend.
🚨 The event was down 12.2% compared to last year at 4.544 million average viewers on FOX. pic.twitter.com/1oZ4h9CPNt— Austin Konenski (@AustinKonenski) March 7, 2023
Immediate reaction to the ratings was to blame Chase Elliott being out.
Others added that if the Chase Elliott effect is real, it’s a bad sign.
While some pointed to Elliott’s absence, others looked to the broadcast booth.
Fans were not happy with Patrick’s presence.
Fox has drawn plenty of negative criticism for their broadcast quality so far this year. The Pennzoil 400 production was no different.
Nascarman from Racing-Reference gives added Truck and Xfinity numbers to the story while SBJ’s Adam Stern compared the Cup viewership to other motorsports from the weekend.
Cindy Yen’s weekly analysis gave further insight into the viewership trends.
The drop off for NASCAR viewership is concerning for fans as Cup tv numbers continued to trend down. Fans can be encouraged by the fact that NASCAR remained higher than IndyCar and F1 combined, while Indy fans will be disappointed in falling behind Formula 1 race that saw Verstappen dominate the race wire to wire.
NASCAR remains atop the viewing for the motorsports weekend and the feeder series, but the numbers show something has to give for Cup broadcasts.
