NASCAR President Steve Phelps addresses ratings after multiple rain-impacted races during season

Ahead of the season finale for NASCAR this weekend at Phoenix Raceway, President Steve Phelps and Chief Operating Officer Steve O’Donnell held a press conference regarding the current state of the sport.

One of the topics Phelps decided to tackle was the topic of ratings, and how multiple rain-impacted races, including the Clash at the Coliseum, the Daytona 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 contributed to a rollercoaster season for the sport, television-wise.

“Ratings, I’ll spend a little time on ratings, because it’s super important,” Phelps started. “I want to go back and have a little story time. The beginning of this year, in early February, we had an event, The Clash at the Coliseum, and we were looking at a historic atmospheric river event, I believe, is what they called it. It was just — a lot of rain, I guess we’ll go with that. So we did something we had never done before, we pulled a race up a day, and we raced on Saturday night. Got crushed in the rating. Fans didn’t know when it was, how we’re going to get there. Saturday night is the lowest rated day of the week, but it was the right thing to do. It was a financial bath for us, but it was the right thing to do, for the industry.

“Go two weeks down the road (Daytona 500), and we had more rain, and so we delayed the start of that race a full day, and we took a ratings bath. So, we were down -27. Then, we had a rain-shortened race at the Coca-Cola 600. A rain-interrupted event at the Chicago Street Race. So, three of your biggest races are down double-digits. So mid-teens for the 600 and for the Chicago Street Race, and then -27 (Daytona 500). If you would ask me at the beginning of the year, ‘I will bet you that you can dig out of a 27% hole at the 500, and then two double-digit ratings declines on your next two highest-rated races,’ or two of the three highest-rated races, I would have said, ‘There is no way that’s going to happen.’

“As we sit here for our Cup race, we are in the positive numbers. And what does that say to me? It says the sport is resilient, and the support is growing.”

Even though NASCAR as a whole, particularly the Cup Series, dealt with some unfortunate circumstances in 2024, Steve Phelps is encouraged by the incredible comeback the sport’s ratings made. If it’s any indicator for next season, it’s certainly a great sign of things to come.