The Daytona 500 beginning the NASCAR Cup Series was delayed by more than four hours on Sunday due to inclement weather. Despite the two red-flag stoppages during the 200-lap race, the event still averaged 6.76 million viewers on FOX as William Byron took home the Harley J. Earl Trophy for a second straight year.
The race peaked with 7.96 million viewers from 2:06 to 2:15 p.m. EST, and it ranked as the most-watched sporting event of the weekend despite competition from NBA All-Star festivities and the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament. Compared to the previous year, viewership of the Daytona 500 was up 13% as FOX Sports commenced its new media rights deal with NASCAR to air the first 14 races of the Cup Series season. It should be noted that the start time of last year’s race was postponed to Monday due to storms in the area.
Despite the year-over-year improvement, the 2025 edition of the Daytona 500 is still the second least-watched iteration of the race in the last decade. FOX has been televising the event every year since 2006, and it routinely averaged more than 9 million viewers for the race until the global pandemic in 2020. Over the last five years, the race has averaged 6.93 million viewers on FOX despite alterations in measurement by Nielsen Media Research.
The 2021 version of the Daytona 500 started on time, but it was delayed by approximately six hours because of rain and ended up accruing the lowest viewership and rating in the history of the race. Nielsen recently expanded its out-of-home panel, claiming that it would be able to reach 100% of the contiguous television population in the United States.
FOX Corporation recently attained an average of 127.7 million viewers for Super Bowl LIX, representing an all-time record for the championship as the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs. The Nielsen Big Data + Panel “Reach” methodology demonstrated that 182.8 million unique viewers watched the game for at least one minute. As a result, this represents the largest reach of a Super Bowl in history, surpassing the 182.2 million viewers reached on the Paramount Global presentation. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal will present the championship game next year as the league continues operating under 11-year media rights deals reportedly worth a collective $111 billion.
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