With NASCAR taking last weekend off ahead of its shift from FOX Sports to NBC Sports networks, Formula 1 had a rare chance to play the big dog role for U.S. motorsports with the Canadian Grand Prix on ABC.
The live telecast averaged a 0.77 Nielsen rating and 1.394 million household viewers per numbers from ShowBuzzDaily.com for the entire ABC telecast, which included the lengthy pre-race show. That’s basically level with last year, which averaged 0.78/1.380m on ABC. However, the race-only portion of the telecast (from 2-4pm ET) averaged 1.76 million viewers, ABC/ESPN reports. That is the fourth-largest live F1 audience ever after this year’s races at Miami and Monaco — which ranked second and third — so three of the four largest live F1 audiences ever have been recorded in 2023.
F1 also ranked second in motorsports programming with its Saturday qualifying coverage on ESPN2, which averaged 0.31/555,000 viewers.
The NTT IndyCar Series was on USA Network for its Road America race telecast, which averaged 0.23 and 385,000 viewers. That’s up slightly in viewers from last year’s first race of the season on USA, at Detroit’s Belle Isle (0.23, 354K). Last year’s Road America race aired on NBC, where it averaged 0.69/1.087m.