NASCAR Races Back With 4% TV Growth in 2022

NASCAR is poised to wrap up its 2022 season this weekend after a bounce-back year in TV viewership.

Heading into Sunday’s NBC Sports coverage of the NASCAR Cup Series championship at Phoenix Raceway, the motorsport averaged 3,031,000 million viewers over 37 races this season.

That’s up 4% from an average of 2,912,000 viewers over the same period last season.

Drivers Joey Logano, Chase Elliott, Ross Chastain, and Christopher Bell will all be in contention on Sunday for the title, which has a total purse of $10,542,284.

NASCAR’s TV performance hasn’t slowed down with this season.

• FOX Sports averaged 3.7 million viewers in the first half of the season — up 8% from 2021. 
• NASCAR experienced its highest viewership since 2017 during that same time period. 
• NBC shifted some of its NASCAR races to USA Network after shutting down NBCSN. 

NBC’s coverage of the Cup Series title begins at 3 p.m. ET, and the broadcast team will include race analysts Dale Earnhardt Jr, Jeff Burton, and Steve Letarte; play-by-play announcer Rick Allen; and studio analysts Dale Jarrett, Kyle Petty, and Brad Daugherty. 

NASCAR Still Beats Formula 1

NASCAR has been watching rival Formula 1’s growth in the U.S, but it still out-rates F1 by a large margin TV-wise.

Competing head-to-head on Oct. 23, NBC’s coverage of the NASCAR’s Homestead race averaged 2.31 million viewers compared to 1.11 million for ABC’s telecast of F1’s U.S. Grand Prix.