NASCAR Takes BIG Hit in Clash TV Ratings

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Joshua Lipowski

What’s Happening?

NASCAR’s season-opening Busch Light Clash at the LA Coliseum brought in 1.511 million viewers on Saturday night, which was a 58.6% drop from 2023 which had 3.647 million viewers. This was not unexpected as NASCAR had to move the race up from Sunday night to Saturday night and switch the race from network TV on Fox to cable TV on FS1.

This race received higher viewership than both postponed 2023 NASCAR Cup Series cable races at Dover (1.067 million) and New Hampshire (1.030 million).

.@FS1 got 1.511 million viewers for Saturday night's Busch Light Clash, down from the first two editions that were held on Sundays on @FoxTV (2022: 4.283 million viewers | 2023: 3.647 million viewers).

🔲 NASCAR had to move race to Saturday due to severe weather coming in L.A. pic.twitter.com/slLKmFISDw
— Adam Stern (@A_S12) February 6, 2024

Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch ranked NASCAR’s Clash as the 7th most-watched sports event of Saturday night, and the 4th most-watched event on cable TV. The 3 cable events that beat NASCAR were college basketball games, Duke vs UNC, Tennessee vs Kentucky, and Houston vs Kansas. The race did beat out the NHL All-Star Game, which was on Network TV.
As far as the key demographic of 18-49, NASCAR ranked 5th amongst events on cable TV according to Lewis. It was beat out by the same three college basketball games plus ESPN College Gameday.
Fans were quite optimistic about the viewership number. Given all of the issues NASCAR had to deal with, they felt that NASCAR did okay bringing in just over 1.5 million viewers.