Motorsports continued to hold its own against the sports Goliath of college basketball last weekend, with NASCAR up from the week prior and Formula 1 realizing a year-on-year gain.
NASCAR’s Cup Series round from Atlanta led the way with a 1.95 Nielsen rating and 3.422 million household viewers Sunday on FOX, per numbers from ShowBuzzDaily.com. That was down from a 2.36/4.003m last year, but a slight uptick from the previous week’s Phoenix race (1.93/3.389m).
Formula 1, meanwhile, rebounded from its slight year-on-year decline for its season opener with a gain for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on ESPN, which averaged a 0.74/1.523m. That was up 5% over the ’22 race on ESPN (1.44m) and up 17% compared to last year’s F1 season average. It was also the weekend’s most-viewed telecast across ESPN platforms, according to the network, which reports that Buffalo was the top local market for the race, averaging a 2.4 rating. Time for a Buffalo GP, maybe? Last year on this date, ESPN carried the Bahrain GP, which averaged 0.75/1.353m.
Despite its smaller overall audience, F1 bested Cup in the 18-49 age range, averaging 681,000 in that demographic to Cup’s 608K.
NASCAR’s Xfinity Series race from Atlanta averaged 0.58/1.019m on FS1 Saturday afternoon, while the Camping World Truck Series race that preceded it on FS1 averaged 0.48/807,000. Last year these races averaged 0.66/1.123m and 0.51/841K, respectively.
While Saturday’s IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Sebring was live in its entirety on the Peacock streaming service, the portion airing on the USA network averaged 100,000 viewers.