NASCAR Cup Brickyard 400 Beats PGA Tour and WWE SmackDown to Top the US TV Viewership Chart

NASCAR Cup race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway garnered high television ratings and viewership numbers to beat PGA Tour final and WWE SmackDown for the week’s top spot.

Sunday’s Brickyard 400 on NBC got around 1.5 million more views than the PGA Tour final on CBS. WWE Friday Night SmackDown on Fox was a distant third with 1.77 million views.

NASCAR journalist Adam Stern reveals this week’s US TV viewership numbers in a Tweet.

He writes, “Most viewed sports events last weekend (on U.S. TV):

1) Brickyard 400 (NBC): 4.343 million viewers

2) PGA Tour final round (CBS): 2.893M

3) WWE Friday Night Smackdown (Fox): 1.777M

4) Xfinity Series (NBC): 1.683M

5) PGA Tour third round (CBS): 1.657M”

NBC reports, “TV-only viewership peaked between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. EST, when the race was being decided“. Around 5 million people watched Denny Hamlin crash out with only a few laps to go and Kevin Harvick driving to his third Indianapolis victory.

Additionally, Saturday’s Indy race got a 26% higher rating than the last year’s Daytona outing. And it earned a Total Audience Delivery(TAD) of 1.145 million TV spectators.  The strong numbers made it the NBC Sports’ best-afternoon race.

After that, the NASCAR Xfinity’s first outing at the Indianapolis road course, Pennzoil 150 got an average TAD of 1.692 million viewers. And it became the highest-viewed Xfinity race at the Indianapolis in the past three years.

Last week’s NASCAR Cup race one of the lowest-rated Brickyard 400

Sporting News points out that despite the strong weekly viewership numbers of the Brickyard 400. It doesn’t hold much against the past Brickyard races. They point out that the numbers look strong independently but when compared to past numbers they look weak.

Last year, the Brickyard 400 got 2.97 million views. However, the race was held in September and was competing against NFL games.

NBC revealed that viewership increased by more than 1 million from last year’s July 4 weekend race. However, the last year’s race 4th of July weekend Daytona race got 3.31 million views despite being affected by rain.

Read More: Daytona Road Course to Replace the Watkins Glen NASCAR Races: Reports