Unlike in previous years, NASCAR did not visit Dover Motor Speedway in the spring, with this year's trip to the Monster Mile set to take place in the middle of summer.
Past Dover races have been shown live on Fox or Fox Sports 1, given their position in the early portion of the schedule. Based on the previous media rights deal, this year's 400-lap Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 around the four-turn, 1.0-mile (1.609-kilometer) high-banked Dover, Delaware oval would have been shown live on NBC or USA Network.
But this year's race, the 21st race on the 26-race regular season schedule and the fourth of five races in the sport's first-ever in-season tournament, isn't a part of Fox's portion or NBC's portion of the broadcast schedule.
The new seven-year, $7.7 billion media rights agreement introduced Amazon Prime Video to the sport, and it reintroduced TNT Sports for the first time since 2014. With Prime and TNT each given five races, Fox's season-opening portion of the calendar was reduced from 18 to 14 races (16 to 12 points races) while NBC's season-ending portion of the calendar was reduced from 20 to 14.
Dover NASCAR race not being shown on NBC
Prime's first-ever five-race stint lasted from late May's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway to June's race at Pocono Raceway, while TNT Sports' reintroduction to the Cup Series got underway in late June at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It has since aired the races at the Chicago Street Course and Sonoma Raceway.
TNT Sports is responsible for the entire five-race In-Season Challenge, so Sunday's Dover race is also a part of its broadcast schedule, as is next weekend's Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the de facto tournament championship race.
After that race, NBC's portion of the schedule is set to get underway with the race at Iowa Speedway on Sunday, August 3, though like a majority (10 of 14) of races during NBC's portion, that race is actually set to be shown live on USA Network. This is similar to the Fox/Fox Sports 1 breakdown, which saw just five races on the former and nine on the latter.
USA Network replaced NBC Sports Network as the alternate NBCUniversal-owned channel during NBC's part of the season after NBC Sports Network shut down in late 2021.
The first race of the year set to be shown live on NBC itself is the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 23. Beyond that, only the season's final three races at Talladega Superspeedway, Martinsville Speedway, and Phoenix Raceway are actually set to be shown on NBC.
Tune in to TNT Sports at 2:00 p.m. ET this Sunday, July 20 for the live broadcast of the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 from Dover Motor Speedway.