TV News: Weekend TV Ratings

Rating Analysis

NASCAR: The NASCAR Cup Series race at the Charlotte ROVAL averaged 2.39 million viewers on NBC last weekend.

The event was down 6.3% compared to last year at 2.55 million average viewers on NBC, but Saturday’a Xfinity race on NBC was up 7.57% from the same network in 2021.

Both NASCAR races only drew 18% of its viewers in the all-important 18-49 year old age group, an absolutely horrible result as the NASCAR fan base continues to die of old age.

Formula 1: Contrary to NASCAR’s horrible 18% result, the F1 Japanese GP on ESPN2 had 66% of the viewers in the all-important 18-49 year old age group…..perhaps the best in all of sports.

Although the TV rating was down because of the rain delay at 1:00am when everyone was going to bed, the fact that 66% of those tuned in were in the desired age bracket for sponsors and advertisers indicates F1’s fan base is young and vibrant.

Considering the overnight hours, and the long red flag for rain, The Japanese GP on ESPN2 drew an average audience of 549K views, down 27.38% from the last time the Japanese GP was run in 2019 and drew 756K viewers on ESPN. That was the largest ever for the race. Given the bad time slot in the USA it would be difficult for the Japanese GP to ever hit 1 million viewers.

This year had almost the same number of people watching as 2019 at the start at 1 a.m. ET – the peak audience for the event was 767K, and it was in the 1-1:15 a.m. quarter-hour at the start of the race and then after one lap the was red-flagged and the audience declined.

676K were tuned into ESPN2 when the race was restarted at 3:15 a.m. ET, but then declined when viewers had to catch some shuteye before the sun came up.

Rating Details

*Race last ran in 2019