IndyCar TV Rating Drops Below 1 Million But Continue Overall Gains

The IndyCar television rating for the FOX telecast of the XPEL Grand Prix At Road America may have dropped below 1 million viewers for the first time in four races, but the overall increase in viewers over last season remains substantial.

The year-to-year increase is now 33 percent more viewers watching IndyCar on FOX than last year on average.

This comes despite FOX’s IndyCar Series coverage from Road America posted 781,000 viewers in an early afternoon starting time on June 22. That was down 10 percent from last year’s 863,000 viewers for the Road America Race in 2024.

The race peaked with 934,000 viewers from 3:30-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time.

Number Crunching

There are some differences, however.

Last year’s Road America IndyCar race was one week closer to the Indianapolis 500. Road America was on June 9, and the 2024 Indy 500 was May 26.

In the TV world, the additional viewers in 2024 could have been aided by momentum from the 500 that was still fresh.

In 2024, the IndyCar schedule did not have any breaks after the Indy 500 as the schedule went straight to the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix the following weekend and one week after that, Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

Trending Upwards

But there remain some positive and impressive trends.

Sunday’s race viewership is up 25 percent over last year’s 626,000 viewers for the IndyCar 2024 non-Indy 500 race average on NBC/USA/CNBC.

Through the first nine races of the season, IndyCar on FOX is averaging 1,882,000 viewers, up 33 percent from last year’s 1,420,000 viewers through the first nine races on NBC/USA/CNBC.

IndyCar’s greatest television competition on Sunday, June 22 didn’t come from a competing sport, but from the major news developments with the United States bombing raid of nuclear facilities in Iran.

Ratings for news coverage on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and NewsMax were more than double last year’s ratings for those networks one year ago.

On Sunday, June 25, those four news networks had a combined average of 4.214 million. On the corresponding Sunday in 2024 (June 23) the viewership average was 1.862 million.

On the actual Road America race date in 2024 (June 9), the four TV cable news channels had 1.99 million viewers.

This year’s Indianapolis 500 drew 7.01 million viewers and was the most watched Indy 500 telecast in 17 years. The viewership peaked at 8.5 million for the final 15 minutes of the Indy 500.

It was the first time the Indy 500 was televised on FOX.

Television ratings momentum continued with more 1.061 million viewers for the June 1 Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix and the June 15 Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway, which drew 1 million, 12 thousand viewers for a prime-time Sunday night telecast.

This is the first season IndyCar has been televised exclusively by FOX with all races on the major FOX network.