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…
This past weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega saw an overall dip in viewership from 2024. The 2025 Jack Link’s 500 saw 4.041 million viewers, down from the 4.307 million viewers the spring race drew in 2024. The race’s viewership has also dropped every year of the NASCAR Next-Gen Era.
.@FoxTV got 4.041 million viewers for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega, down 6% from last year.
➡️ Talladega marked the final race on network TV for NASCAR's premier series until the August 23rd event at Daytona on @NBC. pic.twitter.com/QFD3ChV8ID— Adam Stern (@A_S12) April 29, 2025
This 6.167% drop in viewership is the fourth consecutive year the Talladega spring race has lost viewers. Compared to the 2021 spring race, which drew 4.701 million viewers and was the final Spring Race for the Generation Six car, viewership for the race has dropped by 14.040%. This year’s race saw the largest year-to-year drop off of that window, with last year’s 5.5% drop in second place.
This season, overall NASCAR Cup Series viewership numbers are down. This drop is partially due to the new Media Rights Deal, which saw a major drop-off in total races on network TV (also referred to as free TV). This past weekend at Talladega was the final race for NASCAR on “Big FOX”, the final race on network TV until the Aug. 23 race at Daytona on NBC.
Talladega Spring Race Viewership 2021-2025
| 2021 Viewers | 2022 Viewers | 2023 Viewers | 2024 Viewers | 2025 Viewers |
| 4.701 Million | 4.682 Million | 4.554 Million | 4.307 Million | 4.041 Million |
This year’s spring race saw online drama and fan backlash for more than one reason. Since the introduction of NASCAR’s Next-Gen car, fans and drivers have been complaining about the fuel-saving races at superspeedways, often calling them boring. This weekend, like so many before it, saw little on-track excitement but few cautions, which is a rare sight in modern superspeedway races.
However, the on-track product wasn’t the only complaint from this past weekend. The FOX Sports broadcast is often the cause of tension among fans. The production of the race itself was not the issue this weekend. Rather it was the breaks, as FOX opted to go to two side-by-side commercial breaks with less than 15 to go, with the final break happening with nine laps to go.
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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