Talladega Superspeedway is scheduled to host the second race of the round of 8 of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs this Sunday afternoon.
This race, playoff race number eight on the four-round, 10-race playoff schedule, is the first superspeedway race since the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway in late August.
It's also the first race since that Daytona race set to be shown live on NBC rather than USA Network.
Talladega NASCAR playoff race not being shown on USA
USA Network, which effectively replaced NBC Sports Network as the NBCUniversal-owned alternate channel during NBC's portion of the broadcast schedule in 2022 after NBC Sports Network initially shut down, has shown each of the first seven playoff races.
In fact, it has shown 10 of the 11 races that have been contested since the switch from TNT Sports, one of the two new broadcast partners as a part of NASCAR's new seven-year, $7.7 billion media right deal, to NBC in early August, as the first three races following that switch were all shown live on USA Network.
USA Network, which, like several other of NBCUniversal's cable networks, is in the process of being spun off from NBCUniversal to a new Comcast-formed called Versant, is not scheduled to show any more Cup Series races this year.
No more NASCAR Cup races on USA in 2025
NBC is set to wrap up the season with this Sunday's race at Talladega, next Sunday's round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway, and the following Sunday's Championship 4 title decider at Phoenix Raceway.
Before the current media rights deal went into effect at the start of 2025, NBC had been responsible for the season's final 20 races, rather than just the final 14. Those 20 races were split evenly between NBC and USA Network, but this year's schedule saw NBC drop from 10 races down to four.
Fox experienced a similar shift to open the season, dropping from 18 races (16 points races) to 14 (12). Previously, a majority of the races were shown live on Fox, but this year, Fox was responsible for just five events while Fox Sports 1 aired nine.
From late May to late July, Amazon Prime Video and TNT Sports were each responsible for five races between Fox's portion and NBC's portion of the broadcast schedule.
Whether a race is shown live on NBC or USA Network, Leigh Diffey is the lead announcer in the NBC Sports broadcast booth after replacing Rick Allen in August 2024, and he is joined in the booth by longtime analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte.
NBC's live coverage of the YellaWood 500 is scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET this Sunday, October 19. Begin a free trial of FuboTV and catch all of the upcoming NASCAR Cup Series playoff action on NBC!