from
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/nascars-darlington-6-million-viewers
NASCAR's Darlington race crushed it with over 6 million viewers
By Gary Gastelu | Fox News
NASCAR's Chief Racing Development Officer on the sport's return to the track NASCAR EVP and Chief Racing Development Officer, Steve O'Donnell talks
to Fox News Autos editor Gary Gastelu about the challenges of restarting
the NASCAR season at Darlington Raceway amid the coronavirus pandemic.
NASCAR’s return to racing at Darlington Raceway was a huge ratings hit.
The Fox network broadcast of The Real Heroes 400 had an average of
6,323,000 viewers on Sunday afternoon.
Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
That’s up 38 percent from the last NASCAR race in Phoenix on March 8,
before the series took a 10-week hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
and makes it the most-watched sports event in the U.S. since the Daytona
500 in February.
The race, which was held without spectators at the track, also received
the highest ratings of any NASCAR race other than the Daytona 500 since
2017, and beat last year’s All-Star race, which was held the same
weekend, by about 2 million viewers. Michael Mulvihill, the Fox Sports
EVP in charge of analytics, said the biggest growth was among men age
18-24, which was up 47 percent compared to the March 8 race.
Michael Mulvihill
✔
@mulvihill79
NASCAR audience showed up early and hung around for a long time
yesterday. Audience at 4p was the same as it was for the entire race
(6.3m). That’s really rare.
Average viewer watched for 113 minutes. Average of three prior races had
been 92.
84
11:15 AM - May 18, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy
20 people are talking about this
Along with Professional Bull Riders and UFC, NASCAR is one of the first
major American sports series to return to competition, beating the NBA,
NHL and MLB back to action under a health and safety protocol aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
AP
AP
Kevin Harvick won the bellwether event and earned his 50th career win.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)