NASCAR Viewership Surges, Ratings Increase At Indy

The ratings for the Brickyard 400 are out and all the empty seats at the track were because so many were watching on NBCSN. It was the largest audience in the channels history.

With a 3.1 rating and 5.2 million people tuning into NBCSN for the Brickyard 400 there was celebrating in the NBC and NASCAR offices. The great numbers are a bit of a double edged sword though. There can be no more excuses that the channel is not known enough for this size audience to watch. The last time the numbers were this good was when it aired on ESPN and posted a 3.4 rating with 5.22 million viewers. The race was a runaway winner for highest rated cable sports broadcast of the weekend.

The news for the entire weekend was a huge positive. The ability to match the viewership of the same race broadcast on ESPN proves that there is not a low ceiling for ratings and viewership on the cable net. The 1.59 million viewers for the Xfinity race also was a huge increase from last week and almost double from two weeks ago. The Xfinity race was able to be the highest rated cable sports broadcast for Saturday.

On the social network ratings NASCAR again saw huge growth. The unique authors, according to Nielsen, were over 23,000 for the Brickyard 400. After a weekend that saw just 10,000 unique authors, this is a fantastic number. That number did not just win Sunday for sports broadcast, but the entire weekend in total posts. It did trail the Giants Red Sox game in unique authors, it beat it in total posts giving it the victory.

For those wondering how the social ratings impact the television ratings, NASCAR has been hovering around only 20-25% of its viewers between ages 18-49. That is the most important age demo for advertisers and broadcasters. This week the massive jump in the Nielsen Social ratings translated to a increase to 30% of the audience in the prime demo.

NASCAR has one more weekend without any major competition on television before the Olympics. As I have been writing for several weeks now, NASCAR needed to make an impression in this window. The numbers from Sunday are great and NASCAR and NBC need to see those hold up. Last season saw a spike for the Brickyard as well, but followed it with a steady decline to a 1.8 rating and less than 3 million viewers for the second New Hampshire race.

The storylines of the return of Jeff Gordon and the last race at Indy for Tony Stewart might have driven some of the viewers to the race. The big question is will any of the new viewers return for Pocono next week. The race itself was widely panned on social media and traditional media as well. If the additional viewers do not return next weekend the drop will look twice as bad.

With the numbers that NBCSN posted for the Brickyard there are no more excuses for low ratings other than people just do not want to watch. The audience was younger and found NBCSN, those are the two biggest excuses I hear for low ratings. The larger younger audience also kills the “younger people are streaming the race” argument as well. If they want to watch the race they find it on TV. With all the chest pounding NBC and NASCAR did over the ratings this week, they had better not hide if they step back next week.

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