US-Iran war impacts NASCAR TV ratings across COTA, St. Pete

The NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday at Circuit of the Americas drew 3.933 million viewers on over-the-air FOX.

This number is down from the 4.132 million this same race earned last year but there are several broader television factors to consider when parsing the numbers. Due to the United States military action in Iran over the weekend, cable television networks saw a 93 percent year-over-year increase and 64 percent week-over-week increase.

These numbers are via Nielsen’s "Big Data + Panel" metric, which also showed NASCAR as  the most watched sporting event of the weekend over the New York Knicks vs San Antonia Spurs game, which earned 2.7 million viewers on ABC and the PGA TOUR Cognizant Classic, which drew 2.5 million on NBC.

The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Circuit of the Americas drew 1.1 million viewers on The CW down four percent year-over-year with 1.4 million viewers watching the finish.

Similar to the Cup Series race, Saturday’s sporting events also faced increased viewership from cable news. Cable news viewership was up more than three times what those channels drew the weekend before.

The same dynamic applies to the Craftsman Truck Series race earlier on Saturday on the Streets of St Petersburg on FOX. The first ever event on a street course for the division drew one million viewers.

There is no direct comparison since this was a first-time companion event with the IndyCar Series.