NASCAR Executives Earn Unlikely Praise as Fans Acknowledge Bold Moves

2025 has been a year of experimentation for NASCAR. It started off with a grassroots delight for diehard fans at Bowman Gray Stadium, where Cup Series drivers ran the Cook Out Clash race. Then, an international road course entered the scene for the first time since 1958, as the Mexico City race floored fans. What is more, NASCAR’s 2023 media rights deal came alive. Traditionalists would doubt all this novelty, but the progressives know that the sport is growing.

The NASCAR Cup Series concluded its exciting In-Season Tournament last weekend. Fans held their breath across the five-race run where Ty Dillon’s ‘Cinderella’ run and Ty Gibbs’ quiet progress grabbed the headlines. After this successful tournament, the fans gained more faith in the sport.

NASCAR is rebounding from its lows

There was indeed a lot to rebound from. The Panic of 2008, or the economic crisis that afflicted the United States and the rest of the world that year, inflicted on NASCAR. FOX Sports telecasts dropped from 10 million to 8.5 million in just a year. The country’s national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent demotivated fans from attending and enjoying races. While there was a partial resurgence through the late 2010s, the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be another challenge. There were risks of skipping the 2020 season entirely, and NASCAR’s iRacing Pro Invitational Series was not so popular. After all, who would prefer pixelated cars instead of the raw sound of V8 engines on a racetrack?

However, NASCAR is now on a war footing to boost its TV ratings and viewership. Last Sunday, 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace snapped a 100-race winless streak at the Brickyard 400, while Ty Gibbs wrestled $1 million from Ty Dillon. According to Sports Video Group, the race “earned a 1.24 household rating across TNT & TruTV with an average of 2.5 million viewers per minute, ranking NASCAR as the #1 sport of the week on television overall.” The average viewers also marked a “12% increase over the 2024 NCS cable race average (2.2 million).” These positive numbers prompted a NASCAR fan on Reddit to ask, “Do you think that NASCAR is growing in popularity, not growing or shrinking, or shrinking in popularity ?”

This is the question of the hour, as the evidence lies elsewhere as well. For the first time in the sport’s history, Amazon Prime introduced streaming in its 5-race schedule. NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps expected its viewership to be “at least as good as what we’d see on cable.” But Prime exceeded that expectation, garnering 2.72 million viewers for just the Coca-Cola 600 race, while cable TV’s average for the same race has been 2.1 million and 2.3 million over the past five years.

Throw in the new racetracks – like Bowman Gray Stadium, Rockingham Speedway, and the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez track in Mexico – and you have a recipe for excitement. NASCAR’s first points-paying race in international waters fetched 2.1 million viewers on Prime. What is more, NASCAR is not stopping, with its plans extending to a street race in San Diego around the Coronado Naval Base.

And fans are getting swept up in all this excitement. The numbers are rising, and so are fans’ expectations.

The community has high hopes

There is a vast history of complaints about NASCAR’s innovation. From stage racing to the Next-Gen car, the reasons were plenty. But for a change, fans actually appreciated NASCAR this time around. With exciting road courses spicing up the schedule, one fan applauded the sport’s growth since the disastrous pandemic days. They wrote, “I think since the COVID circus, there has been renewed interest. May catch flack here, but im all in favor of things like Mexico City, Chicago street, ROVAL, etc.” Behind the innovative racetracks are the decision-makers, Steve Phelps and Ben Kennedy. One fan favored them over President Steve O’Donnell and CEO Jim France: “Phelps and Ben Kennedy have been pretty good for the sport. O’Donnell and Jim France is another story/conversation though.”

During the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series era, the sport saw a big decline. In 13 years, it lost 5 million viewers, dropping from 4.1 million in 2017 to 3.3 million in 2018. So one fan compared today’s bright numbers with that era: “I think viewership has finally stabilized after 2019. The sport is 110% in a better spot then where it was at in the MENCS era. People forget that NASCAR was very much on the verge of going up for sale around that time. Was altogether a very depressing period, and personally for me, is when I started losing interest.” Somebody else chimed in, applauding NASCAR’s baby steps towards growth. They said, “Stabilizing popularity is hopefully the first step towards growth…A slow stable growth is better than a big boom that busts in a few years.”

Somebody else highlighted NASCAR’s playing around with the schedule. For instance, the chaotic Talladega Superspeedway moved to the Round of 8 in the Cup Series playoffs. Plus, the dates of Atlanta, Watkins Glen, and Bristol shifted. These changes enthralled the fan, who wrote, “The biggest thing to me is the shake up of the schedule, not the same thing every single year. Many of the main stays but dates moving around new tracks, some fall off and come back. That’s been really fun to me to watch.”

Clearly, NASCAR is doing some things right. With the numbers and optimism soaring, the future looks bright. Let us see what new innovations the sport brings to the table next.