On Sunday (3/29), Fox Sports televised its first ever regularly scheduled NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES points race on Fox Sports 1, and the audience from Martinsville (VA) Speedway was record-setting. Overcoming intense competition, the race attracted 4,061,000 viewers making it the most-watched motorsports event in network history, the fourth most-watched telecast ever on the network and the only non-MLB postseason event among the network's top five.
According to Nielsen, the race propelled
Fox Sports 1 to its most-watched Sunday from 6:00 AM-3:00 AM since launch, averaging 1,068,000 viewers over that span. Moreover,
Fox Sports 1 was the most-watched ad supported cable network from 1:00-5:15 PM ET on Sunday (4,089,000 viewers), posting a +170% advantage over the next closest network (Nickelodeon, 1,511,000 viewers). The audience for the race peaked at 5,450,000 from 5:00-5:11 PM ET as Denny Hamlin held off a final-lap charge from Brad Keselowski to cop his first win of the season.
The audience for Sunday's
NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES race supplanted the previous
Fox Sports 1 motorsports record of 3,526,000 set Feb. 15, 2014 for the SPRINT UNLIMITED. The only other Sprint Cup points event on
Fox Sports 1 was last season's Bristol race on March 16 which was moved from
FOX to
Fox Sports 1 due to rain. That race averaged 3,227,000 viewers.
Preceding the race, NASCAR RACEDAY posted 1,008,000 viewers, +52% above last year's edition from Martinsville (661,000). Immediately following the race, a special airing of
FOX SPORTS LIVE posted 1,904,000 viewers marking the show's seventh most-watched edition ever.
Later in the evening, Real Salt Lake's 2-1 victory over Toronto in MLS action tallied 211,000 viewers, the largest audience for a
Fox Sports 1 MLS match since opening weekend, and +50% above the comparable package's 2014 season average (141,000).
Saturday (3/28) was a good day for racing of all kinds on
Fox Sports 1. The JOCKEY CLUB TOUR from Dubai delivered 291,000 viewers making it the second-most watched horse race in
Fox Sports 1 history and more than doubled the average of the 12 previous races (120,000). Later that day, the NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES race from Martinsville scored 1,100,000 viewers, +22% from the 2013 race on SPEED (902,000). Last year's race was rained out and moved to Sunday at 5:30pm and delivered 532,000 viewers.
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