Azerbaijan GP

TV News: Weekend USA Motorsports TV Ratings Sept 14-15

USA TV Ratings for this past weekend. NASCAR was in Watkins Glen, F1 was in Azerbaijan, NHRA was in Maple Grove and IndyCar had their big finale in Nashville that flopped miserably on TV

TV Rating Analysis

The NFL season kicked in full force, which had a negative impact on all motorsports

NASCAR

The USA Network got 1.809 million viewers for the NASCAR Cup playoff race at Watkins Glen, down 21.7% from last year, also on the USA Network.

The Xfinity race on Saturday was down a similar percentage

NHRA

Getting a big boost by following the NFL, FOX drew 1.257 million viewers for the NHRA Finals from Maple Grove, PA, down 16.42% from last year, also on FOX, but still the 2nd largest motorsports TV audience of the weekend

Formula 1

The Azerbaijan GP F1 race last Sunday morning averaged 865K viewers on ESPN, down 9.7% from 958K last year (when the race was run in April). The drop was far less than all other forms of motorsports

It was still the third most-watched edition of the race on record

TV Viewership Peaked 8:30am – 8:45am with 1,006,000 viewers

The F1 race drew 46% of its viewers in the all-important 18-49 age group, dwarfing all other forms of motorsports and their aging fanbase

Through 17 races – the F1 season is up 1 pct over ’23 season to date and up 4 pct over ’23 full-season avg

IndyCar

The race that hardly anyone watched – NBC got only 483,000 viewers for IndyCar’s big finale in Nashville, down a massive 56.6% from last year, also on NBC. Surprisingly, the IndyCar race on a major network like NBC, drew far less viewers than F1 in the wee hours of Sunday morning on a cable channel.

TV Rating Data

Network Event Location Total
Viewers
18-49
Viewers
Ratio:
18-49 Yr Old/
Total Viewers
2024
Rating
2023
Rating
Rating
% Chg.
2023
Network
2023
Viewers
2023
18-49
Viewers
Total
Viewers
% Chg
18-49
Viewers
% Chg
USA NASCAR Cup Race Watkins Glen 1,809,000 340,000 19% 1.01 1.30 -22.31% USA 2,310,000 403,000 -21.69% -15.63%
FOX NHRA Finals Maple Grove 1,257,000 210,000 17% 0.68 0.80 -15.00% FOX 1,504,000 460,000 -16.42% -54.35%
ESPN F1 Azerbaijan GP Baku 865,000 395,000 46% 0.48 0.53 -9.43% ESPN 958,000 433,000 -9.71% -8.78%
USA NASCAR Xfinity Race Watkins Glen 778,000 150,000 19% 0.45 0.60 -25.00% USA 981,000 215,000 -20.69% -30.23%
NBC IndyCar Race Nashville 483,000 90,000 19% 0.33 0.70 -52.86% NBC 1,113,000 195,000 -56.60% -53.85%