NASCAR on Prime Skews Younger, But Viewership Lags Behind FOX and FS1... for now
Amazon Prime’s NASCAR streaming debut draws younger fans but falls short of traditional TV viewership.
Welcome to StreamScoop! I know normally we do data deep dives every other week, but with Prime Video’s final NASCAR race, I wanted to do an analysis of the viewership and uncover some insights!
Amazon Prime wrapped up its inaugural NASCAR coverage last Sunday with the Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway. This marked the end of a groundbreaking partnership in which, for the first time in motorsports history, NASCAR races were streamed exclusively on a digital platform.
🏁 Streaming-Only: A First for NASCAR
Prime Video’s broadcast included five NASCAR Cup Series races as well as all practice and qualifying sessionsthroughout the first half of the season—excluding a few exceptions. While the move to streaming represents a historic shift in sports distribution, viewership numbers suggest that live NASCAR audiences still favor traditional broadcast and cable platforms.
Across its five-race slate, Prime averaged 2.1M viewers per race, considerably lower than its linear competitors. For comparison:
FOX (broadcast): 4.52M average viewers
FS1 (cable): 2.46M average viewers
Despite the lower numbers, Amazon saw strong engagement among younger demographics, signaling a possible generational shift in how fans consume live sports.
Prime’s Viewership Breakdown
Race #1 - Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte Motorspeedway
Race: 2.72M viewers
800K viewers in the P18-49 demographic, with younger viewers than cable since 2022.
Post Race: 1.04M viewers
Year-over-Year Comparison: Down ≈12% from 2023’s rain-shortened race on FOX (3.103M viewers)
Race #2 - Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway
Race: 2.06M viewers
According to SVG, the race attracted “the youngest audience in 11 years for the NASCAR Cup Series race that follows the Coca-Cola 600,” and “posted its highest marks among all key adult demographics under the age of 55.”
Post Race: 782K viewers
2024 Comparison: Last year’s NBC broadcast averaged 3.24M before a weather delay pushed the conclusion to USA Network (2.13M viewers).
Race #3 - Firekeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway
Race: 1.77M viewers
Post Race: 964K viewers
Race #4 - Viva Mexico 250 at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
Race: 2.1M viewers
“the youngest audience for any race on the streaming platform and the lowest audience for any Cup Series race since 2017.”
Post Race: 1.07M viewers
Race #5 - The Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway
Race: 1.87M viewers
Post Race: “Retained 43% of race audience,” so ≈804.1K viewers
Year-over-Year Comparison: When looking at the calendar-year comparison, the USA Today 301 race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway averaged 1.94M viewers on the USA Network, just barely ahead of the exclusive streaming race.
Contextual Factors: Last years’s race at Pocono averaged 2.391M viewers on the USA Network, generally down due to unusually high competition that weekend(assassination attempt on Donald Trump).
SBJ’s Adam Stern denoted that, “this past Sunday faced much stiffer competition from news channels than they did the prior year, likely due to the Middle East coverage, with CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and Newsmax averaging a combined 4.21M viewers from noon to 6:00pm ET versus 1.86M last year.”
Analysis
NASCAR’s foray into exclusive digital distribution through Amazon Prime marked a significant shift in how motorsports are delivered to fans, but the resulting viewership figures reveal a complex and evolving landscape. With an average of 2.1M viewers per race, Prime’s numbers fell well short of those seen on traditional broadcast (FOX: 4.52M) and even cable (FS1: 2.46M). However, the gap in raw viewership is only part of the story. Amazon’s broadcasts performed notably well among younger demographics, particularly the coveted P18–49 age group, indicating that while total reach was smaller, the audience composition aligned more with the future of media consumption.
Individual race data shows a clear decline from past benchmarks, with each event underperforming compared to its previous year’s airing on network or cable. The Coca-Cola 600, for example, saw 2.72M viewers this year on Prime—down about 12% from 2023's 3.1M on FOX, even though that race was shortened by rain. Likewise, the Cracker Barrel 400 pulled in just 2.06M viewers, while last year’s NBC/USA combo coverage drew a combined 3.24M before delays. Yet, both of these events ranked among the youngest-skewing audiences NASCAR has seen in recent history, with the Nashville race reportedly drawing “the youngest audience in 11 years.” This indicates that while total numbers were lower, the platform was successful in reaching newer, potentially more digitally native fans.
Later races, such as the FireKeepers Casino 400 and Pocono’s Great American Getaway 400, further illustrated the trend. These events struggled to clear even 2M viewers, yet still saw strong retention for post-race coverage—an indicator of active engagement within the platform. Pocono, notably, retained 43% of its race audience for post-race coverage, signaling that those who tuned in were highly invested. However, viewership for the Pocono race was also affected by external factors. News coverage of conflict in the Middle East drew over 4.2M viewers to competing cable news channels—more than double the number from the same timeslot the year before. This highlights how real-time events outside the sports world can still heavily influence sports streaming performance.
Finally, let’s not forget Thursday Night Football on Prime. At first die-hard NFL fans were furious and non-cordcutters were convinced that the streamer’s coverage would fail. However, that’s not at all what happened, as Prime continued to improve their coverage every week, vied for better matches, and looked for ways to eventize the matchups.
If we look at this graph from The Entertainment Strategy Guy, we can clearly see that Prime has continued to increase their TNF viewership every year.
In an interview with host of The Varsity John Ourand, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said, “we used to really have a robust weekend, where if you went to the race and you wanted to be there the entire weekend camping or staying in a hotel nearby, or whatever that may be, there was on-track activity on Friday, on Saturday as well as the race on Sunday, there were a lot of things at the track; concerts on Fridays, concerts on Saturdays as well.”
This truly speak volumes to how there’s already an established strategy within the sports culture. If NASCAR works with Prime to eventize the races going forward, consumers could be privy to exclusive concerts, standup or other talent.
I’m sure that Prime will have no problem further eventizing and promoting their NASCAR coverage for next year.
Thanks for reading our deep dive! Make sure to tune in on Friday for our weekly Data Dump article, collecting broadcasting and streaming viewership metrics from across the industry.
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Kyle Larson has been dominant!