Phoenix Chase race drew season-low 1.294 million viewers
NXTbets Pro | Published On: October 21, 2026
Phoenix viewership slide
The Phoenix Raceway Cup Series race delivered NASCAR’s season low for viewership in 2026, averaging 1.294 million viewers on a 0.72 rating. The race was the seventh of 10 in The Chase, and the audience came in about 20% below the Chase’s first-six-race average of 1.62 million viewers. That drop left Phoenix as a clear outlier in the playoff stretch and gave NASCAR another data point in a season where the sport has seen its audience fluctuate across different TV windows and networks.
A direct year-over-year comparison was unavailable because Phoenix hosted the championship race in 2025. A comparable points race at Las Vegas last year posted a 0.84 rating and averaged 1.7 million viewers, putting that telecast ahead of Phoenix on both measures. Even without a clean same-race comparison, the Phoenix result showed a softer turnout than a similar late-season points event from last season. Phoenix came at a point when the Chase was well underway.
Chase season averages
The Phoenix telecast also fit into a wider season trend that has held across the Cup Series schedule. Through 33 races, Cup events are averaging 2.431 million viewers, down 1.4% from the same point in 2025. That season-to-date figure still gives NASCAR a stronger base than the Phoenix broadcast drew on its own, but it also shows that the sport’s overall audience has slipped modestly from last year’s pace. The Chase itself has drawn less than the summer package that streamed on Prime Video, which averaged 2.29 million viewers. That comparison matters because it shows the postseason has not automatically outpaced every other rights package in the market, even with the sport’s biggest stakes in play.
The network split has also shaped the numbers. Broadcast races on Fox and NBC have averaged more viewers than cable races on FS1, TNT and USA. The Charlotte stop offered one more example of that divide. The Bank of America 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway drew 1.48 million viewers on USA Network and was down 15% from the 2025 Charlotte Roval race. Taken together, those numbers point to a clear pattern, with the over-the-air window continuing to deliver larger audiences than cable. NASCAR’s season averages show steady interest, but the platform a race lands on still plays a major role in how many viewers it reaches.
NASCAR scheduling debate
The final three Chase races are scheduled to move to NBC and over-the-air television, and NASCAR expects that change to expand the races’ reach to more households. That shift gives the series a better chance to find a wider audience during the closing stretch of the postseason. It also arrives as NASCAR executives continue to think about where the sport fits in the fall sports landscape. One of the biggest concerns is Sunday competition with the NFL, which can limit NASCAR’s exposure on the same day.
NASCAR COO Ben Kennedy said the sport may need to reconsider Sunday scheduling when it negotiates its next media rights deal in 2032. The current media rights contract runs through 2031, which gives NASCAR several seasons to sort out how it wants to approach future race placement. Kennedy’s comments point to a broader strategic issue, not just a ratings one. NASCAR has to balance network windows and the reality of going head-to-head with football every Sunday. The Phoenix numbers sit inside that larger discussion, because they show how a playoff race can land below expectations amid the sport’s scheduling and competition concerns.
