Nascar’s Gateway visit records lowest playoff viewership since Talladega 2021

• Nascar averaging 1.7m viewers through two playoff races, down 10% on last year
• 15 of 16 F1 races have now recorded YoY audience increases; Italian GP becomes tenth event record of year

Nascar averaged 1.53 million viewers on USA Network for last weekend’s visit to Gateway, its lowest viewership for a playoff race since Talladega in 2021.

The first-ever Cup Series playoff race at Gateway Motorsports Park saw a 13 per cent decrease on last year’s second playoff race at Watkins Glen, which averaged 1.76 million viewers.

Through two races, Nascar is averaging 1.7 million viewers in the playoffs, ten per cent down on the same point last season.

The Nascar playoffs overlap with the start of the 2025 National Football League (NFL) season, impacting viewership. This clash has always been a challenge, but the widening gap in audience size between the two properties has made it more pronounced.

Perhaps more worrying for Nascar is that NBC has averaged just 2.02 million viewers over six races, five of them before the NFL season began. That trails the averages recorded by Prime Video and TNT during their five-race packages.

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Further concern for Nascar is emerging in the form of Formula One, which averaged 1.2 million viewers for the Italian Grand Prix on ESPN2.

This concern is evident as Nascar has continued to cite revised Formula One figures in its official viewership releases, reporting 1.02 million viewers per minute for its rival.

So far this year, 15 of Formula One’s 16 races have recorded year-over-year (YoY) audience growth, with last weekend’s visit to Monza setting another US event record – the tenth of the season.

Notably, the Italian Grand Prix marked the closest margin yet between Nascar and Formula One’s viewership figures, with the gap narrowing sequentially at every race this year.

Only two Formula One races – China and Japan – have dipped below the one-million average viewer mark in 2025, with the pair airing in the early hours of the morning. Across 16 races, the series is now averaging 1.34 million viewers.