Daytona 500 rating is lower than last Winter Olympics
Fox earned a 5.1 overnight rating for Sunday night’s Daytona 500 running. It brought an average of 9.3 million viewers to regular tv viewers.
In addition, the Fox Sports Go app brought an additional 51,000 viewers to the race. Last year’s Daytona 500 was only seen by 11,000, via the same app. App viewership is up significantly.
The Clash at Daytona earned a 1.35 share of the network TV audience.
Ryan Blaney was the dominant car for most of the afternoon. However, Austin Dillon took the #3 car to victory lane in the 2018 Daytona 500 event. It was his first win at Daytona International Speedway.
Olympic competition
The 2018 Daytona 500 is the least rated telecast of the ‘Great American Race’ in years. However, it should be noted that this year is faced stiff competition.
The Olympic Games took a large share of the TV audience that weekend. However, none of the coverage overlapped with the coverage of the 2018 Daytona 500. In simple terms, there’s still only so much time people can spend in front of the TV. If they planned to watch the Olympics that night, they likely didn’t also watch the Daytona 500.
Despite that note, the 2014 Daytona 500 was run against the Winter Olympics as well. In comparison to that, the numbers are close but the percentage of the TV viewing audience is still down. The 2014 race ran against Olympic opening ceremonies and still drew 9.3 million viewers in 2014.
Regardless of the Winter Olympics, the 2018 Daytona 500 numbers are still down in comparison to other Olympic years. The 2006 Daytona 500 was a lead in for the Winter Olympics and drew a rating of 11.3 rating.
Daytona 500 TV Numbers
2018 Daytona 500
Rating: 5.1
Viewers 9.3 million
2017 Daytona 500
Rating: 6.6
Viewers 11.92 million
2016 Daytona 500
Rating: 6.1
Viewers 11.4 million
2015 Daytona 500
Rating: 7.3
Viewers 13.36 million
2014 Daytona 500
Rating: 5.6
Viewers 9.3 million
More
Related: 2018 Daytona 500 Results
