The opening round of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs is set to come to an end this Saturday night with the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway after races at Darlington Raceway and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway opened up the postseason.
Joe Gibbs Racing's Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin punched their tickets to the round of 12 by winning these respective races, and 10 more drivers are set to join them by the time Saturday's 500-lap race around the four-turn, 0.533-mile (0.858-kilometer) high-banked Bristol, Tennessee oval concludes.
The races at Darlington and Gateway were both shown live on USA Network rather than NBC, and the streak of races on USA to open up the four-round, 10-race playoffs is set to continue at the "Last Great Colosseum" this weekend.
Bristol Night Race not being shown on NBC
NASCAR is in year number one of a new seven-year, $7.7 billion media rights deal, and to make way for Amazon Prime Video and TNT Sports to enter the picture with five races each, Fox's season-opening portion of the calendar was reduced from 18 races (16 points races) to 14 (12), while NBC's season-ending portion was dropped from 20 to 14.
In Fox's case, the majority of its races had been shown on Fox, while the remainder were shown on Fox Sports 1. But this year, FS1 was responsible for nine of the 14 races, leaving Fox responsible for only five.
A similar situation is true for NBC. Last year, the 20 races during NBC's portion of the schedule were split evenly between NBC and USA Network. USA effectively replaced NBC Sports Network as the NBCUniversal-owned alternate channel during NBC's part of the schedule when NBC Sports Network shut down after 2021.
But while USA remained responsible for 10 races in 2025, NBC itself dropped down to only four.
NBC's portion of the schedule got underway in early August with a race at Iowa Speedway, but that race, along with the next two races at Watkins Glen International and Richmond Raceway, were shown live on USA rather than NBC. NBC officially debuted with the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway three weekends ago.
That race was the final race scheduled for NBC until October, as Saturday night's Bristol Night Race is the third of seven straight races scheduled to open up the playoffs on USA Network.
NBC is next set to air a race on Sunday, October 19, and that race is set to kick off a streak of three straight races on NBC to wrap up the season. That race, the middle race of the semifinal round of 8, is scheduled to take place at Talladega Superspeedway.
The round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway is then set to be shown live on NBC on Sunday, October 26, as is the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, November 2.
Leigh Diffey is the lead announcer, and Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte are the color commentators, whether a race is shown live on NBC or USA Network.
The Bass Pro Shops Night Race is set to be shown live on USA Network from Bristol Motor Speedway starting at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, September 13. Start a free trial of FuboTV now to see which 10 drivers will join Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin in advancing to the round of 12 of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs!