Daytona 500 viewership hits three-year high on Fox

Fox hit a three-year viewership high for NASCAR’s 2026 Daytona 500, though with stiff competition, the race was still on the low end of historic viewership.

On Sunday, the Daytona 500 averaged 7.49 million viewers on Fox. That’s up 11% from last year’s race, which was delayed multiple times due to rain and averaged 6.76 million. This year’s edition was also affected by rain, though it only resulted in the race being moved up an hour.

Despite the rebound, it remains the third-least-watched race since 1974, beating only 2020 (7.33 million) and 2021 (4.91 million), along with last year.

Nielsen’s new Big Data viewership methodology has generally resulted in increased viewership for sports, which could contribute to NASCAR’s increase on Sunday. However, Thursday’s Duel at Daytona measured slightly lower under Big Data (1.835 million) than the older panel standard (1.839 million), so an increase is not always the case.

The Daytona 500 faced stiff sports competition with live Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game on NBC, which could explain the lower historic ratings. Even so, Fox says that the race out-viewed every non-prime-time Winter Olympics window on broadcast and cable, as measured by Nielsen.

Note that NBC combines windows for its Olympic viewership numbers, and Fox’s comparison does not factor in added NBC streaming viewership measured by Adobe Analytics.

Viewership for NASCAR’s other series at Daytona fared much better.

Friday’s Truck Series race on FS1 averaged 1.39 million viewers. That’s a 37% increase from last year and the most-watched Truck Series race since 2016.

The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, formerly the Xfinity Series, averaged 1.81 million viewers on The CW. That’s a slight decrease from last year (1.83 million) but is the second-most-watched Daytona race for the series since 2018.

Viewership next week at Atlanta will be another test for the Cup Series. NASCAR has acknowledged it is trying to fix its viewership “falloff” as the season goes on.