The 68th Daytona 500 acquired 7.489 million viewers airing on FOX on Sunday afternoon based on knowledge from the Nielsen Panel + Huge Knowledge, which has been used since September to measure scores.
A reminder about Huge Panel + Knowledge: Earlier than September, Nielsen used ‘folks meters’ in family panels. The brand new mannequin combines that with knowledge from cable containers and sensible TVs roughly representing 45 million households and 75 million gadgets.
Cable and satellite tv for pc containers report which channel is being watched, time stamps of when channel adjustments happen and period the field stays on a channel. That is referred to as Return Path Knowledge. Sensible TVs use Automated Content material Recognition that acknowledges content material frames, ‘fingerprinting,’ just like how the Shazam app acknowledges songs, utilizing them to establish what sort of content material is being performed.
Nielsen’s patent reveals that ACR “screens the pictures on the TV display screen” and “photos act like fingerprints, which get in comparison with a big reference library.”
In different phrases, it’s not an actual science to check viewership scores now from earlier than September however each fashions have been the requirements of their time. In the end, Huge Knowledge is aware of what’s on the TV however not who or if anybody is watching the place the Panel is aware of precisely who’s watching.
Anyway, this Daytona 500 quantity is up from the 6.76 million viewers that watched a rain interrupted and delayed race a 12 months in the past. The final Daytona 500 to not be affected by rain in some vogue was 2023, which earned 8.173 million.
Nevertheless, the race on Sunday was affected by rain too as the beginning time was moved up an hour to get forward of a thunderstorm line that arrived simply after the race. The Sports activities Enterprise Journal’s Adam Stern wrote that ‘NASCAR sacrificed about 5 share factors from its best-case state of affairs for viewership by transferring the race up an hour to keep away from rain, per historic tendencies.’
Peak viewership reached 9,154,000 through the 5:3-5:45 quarter hour.
FOX boasted that the race ‘outscored each non-prime Winter Olympics window on broadcast and cable’ and ‘topped all broadcast and cable networks in viewership through the race’ from 2:15-to-5:45.
In the meantime, the O’Reilly Auto Elements season opener on Saturday earned 1,812,000 Whole Viewers on The CW, largely flat from final 12 months. Some extra info was offered by the CW as effectively:
Race peaked at 2,321,000 whole viewers from 7:45-8:00 PM ET
Largest Adults 18-49 viewers (340,000) for an O’Reilly Auto Elements Collection race in practically 8 years (since 8/4/18 Watkins Glen on NBC)
Viewership grew +79% in comparison with final 12 months’s remaining race from Phoenix Raceway (11/1/25 on The CW)
The Truck Collection race on FS1 earned 1,387,000 viewers vs. 1,014,000 the 12 months earlier than. This marked a 37 p.c year-over-year enhance. It was probably the most watched Truck Collection race since 2016 with a 1.6 million peak viewership within the 9:45 to 10:00 quarter hour.
This race featured this primary NASCAR race in a decade for Corridor of Famer Tony Stewart and YouTuber Cleetus McFarland making his sequence debut.
The qualifying races for the Daytona 500 on Thursday drew 1.835 million viewers, flat from final 12 months.
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