With FOX Sports televising the Indianapolis 500 from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first time, the race reached a 17-year high with an average of 7.05 million viewers tuning in for the action, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. This marks the largest audience for the race since 2008 when it secured an average of 7.25 million viewers, and it is up 40% from the previous year when NBC averaged 5.02 million viewers for the proceedings.
Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch notes that when combining Adobe Analytics data with the Nielsen figures from last year, the NBC average jumps to 5.31 million viewers. While there was a slight delay for the start of the race, it was significantly shorter than the four-hour weather-related impedance last year
Alex Palou attained the victory zooming by Marcus Ericsson amid the final laps of the contest, which peaked with an average of 8.4 million viewers tuning in during the 4:15 p.m. EST quarter hour. This race marks the largest motorsports television audience within the United States since the 2023 iteration of the Daytona 500, which averaged 8.17 million viewers on FOX. Lewis adds that this year’s Indianapolis 500 outdrew the Daytona 500 for the second time in at least the last 25 years, but the latter faced a three-and-a-half-hour-delay this past February. The NASCAR season-opening Daytona 500 averaged 6.76 million viewers on FOX this year, which was up by 13.4% from the previous occurrence of the race.
Concurrent with the move of the Indianapolis 500 to FOX, the Coca-Cola 600 left the company and started airing on Amazon’s Prime Video. According to Lewis, the Indianapolis 500 was the most-watched race among the Memorial Day weekend motorsports events since 2013, which is when the Coca-Cola 600 averaged 7.13 million. It is also the second-largest year-over-year increase for the Indianapolis 500 since 2005, and it could be further augmented based on final data from the Nielsen Big Data + Panel with the current numbers based on Nielsen Fast National data.
FOX Sports is the exclusive home of the NTT IndyCar Series and Indianapolis 500 race under a media rights deal that began this year. Throughout the season, FOX is presenting the property on 19 broadcast television network windows, marking a new record for the racing series. The Indianapolis 500 broadcast team featured Will Buxton delivering the play-by-play call of the venture, James Hinchcliffe and Townsend Bell providing analysis and pit reporting from Kevin Lee, Jamie Little, Georgia Henneberry and Jack Harvey. Pre-race coverage featured Chris Myers with former NTT IndyCar Series racers Tony Stewart and Danica Patrick.
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