Despite Being Embroiled in Controversy, NASCAR Finds Some Stability in It’s Chaos After Facing Setbacks All Year

It's a wrap for the 2024 NASCAR season, but there is no denying it was full of ups and downs. We saw some close and thrilling finishes, Like at the Atlanta Motor Speedway when Kyle Busch, Daniel Suarez, and Ryan Blaney came across the finish line three wide inches apart from each other. Or at the Daytona 500 when William Byron bested Alex Bowman by a matter of milliseconds. Even NASCAR's short-track package saw some improvement. The Bristol spring race is one example! The tire wear had teams scrabbling to find the perfect strategy, producing an entertaining race.

But the season wasn't without chaos, be it the wrestling match between Kyle Busch and Ricky Stenhouse Jr at the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway or Austin Dillon wrecking Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin for the win in Richmond. NASCAR was put on the spot on several occasions and forced to make tough decisions. Like most recently in the Martinsville race, where we saw some of the biggest race manipulation incidents. Or the current scrutiny it's facing over its playoff format after Joey Logano won the championship, having the lowest average season finish (17.1) by a champion in NASCAR history. However, with the viewership data out, NASCAR seems to have weathered the storm.

The 2024 NASCAR season was a success! Speaking of weathering the storm, Mother Nature wasn't as kind this season. Right from the beginning of the season at Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum. The season opener was preponed by a day. Originally held on a Sunday to garner maximum viewership, it had to be shifted to Saturday. And this cost NASCAR dearly as the viewership tanked. The Clash only saw a viewership of 1.511 million on Fox Sports down from its previous years. In 2023, it was 3.647 million, while the year 2022 saw a viewership of 2022: 4.283 million.

Despite all the controversies and setbacks, NASCAR survived! Recently Sports Business Journal's Adam Stern shared the viewership data for the 2024 season. In an X post, he wrote, "NBC got a 1.60 rating and 2.895 million viewers for Sunday's NASCAR Championship race at Phoenix, roughly flat from last year (1.62, 2.9 million). NASCAR finished the 2024 season averaging 2.892 million viewers per event on U.S. television, up 1% from last year." According to Stern, NBC and USA on the whole, averaged 2.5 million viewers for the back half of the Cup schedule this season, up 2% from last year.

And NBC wrapped up the playoffs with the Phoenix race garnering 3 Million viewers, which is more or less the same as last year. While remaining consistent with the viewership is a success. Some events this year saw massive gains if year-on-year viewership rise is looked at. Like the Talladega playoff race saw a 25% increase, Bristol's second race was up by 19% and lastly, the penultimate race of the season at Martinsville saw a 14% gain. All this quite literally saved the NASCAR season from facing a massive dip in viewership as almost all the highest-grossing races were affected by rain.

Recently, NASCAR analyst Eric Estepp, in a video spoke on this. He said, "Any ratings increase is worth celebrating, considering the sport's biggest races this year were all severely impacted by weather. The season-opening Clash at the Coliseum, which has been a big ratings win the past couple of years, was forced to run a full night early due to severe weather and huge ratings loss. The Daytona 500, the biggest event all year postponed to Monday. The Coca-Cola 600 was cut short by rain. And the Chicago street race was delayed by weather cut short due to darkness for the second straight year. Considering those gargantuan television losses, to come out of the Year up 1% is, in my opinion, a pretty huge win..The fact that ratings have more or less stabilized over the past few seasons is an encouraging sign for the health of the sport."

And Estepp rightly said the big races did witness a significant dip. Like the Daytona, 500 had a viewership of 8.18 Million last year but only got 5.96 this year. Even the Coca-Cola 600 went from 3.4 Million to 3.1 Million. And also while NASCAR's current playoff format is facing a lot of scrutiny, the numbers show a different picture.

NASCAR playoffs caught more eyeballs this year NASCAR introduced the elimination format in 2014, along with the 'win it and you are in'. The system is under fire for not valuing the consistency that drivers show throughout the season. For instance, Kyle Larson has a season-average finish of 8.8 in 2024 along with 6 wins, yet he has to be satisfied with a 6th-place season finish. Logano winning the title despite a mediocre season has caused an uproar in the NASCAR community calling for the playoff format to be rolled back.

While this is going on NASCAR viewership has seen a decent gain during the playoff format, according to Stern's report – "Despite the format criticism, NASCAR still finished the 2024 playoffs up 6% in viewership from last year, with 2.33 million people tuning in per event on average." While the format might be unfair to consistent drivers, it is significantly profiting NASCAR as the broadcasting numbers show. NASCAR has signed a $7.7 billion media rights deal with NBC, Fox, Amazon, and Warner Bros. Discovery starting next season, and there is no way they are going to go back to the pre-playoff format.

However, to up the thrill and also value consistency, NASCAR is planning to bring some changes in the format. Stern also recently noted, "Some senior team executives contacted said they'd be open to forming an industry-wide group to examine the topic. One of the people said that topics that should be examined include whether a win should automatically qualify a driver for the playoffs, as is the case now, and possible changes like whether the regular-season champion should get locked into one of the latter rounds of the playoffs... the person noted that the current system brings excitement but may have swung the pendulum of NASCAR slightly too far toward entertainment and away from the sporting side."

Let's hope to see some changes in the 2025 season! What did you think of the 2024 season? Was it entertaining? Share your thoughts in the comments below.