Every NASCAR offseason brings the same argument, and it almost always begins with the car. Steve O’Donnell fielded questions about it at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 6, and the room got the debate it expected. Freddie Kraft, watching from outside the podium, believed the sport was circling the wrong problem.
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“The television situation is a bigger concern for me. The numbers are bad when we’re on USA Network, and there’s no real way around that. I think we need to figure out a way to get back on network television,” Freddie Kraft said while discussing NASCAR’s current direction, on ‘Door, Bumper Clear’.
O’Donnell was asked whether NASCAR would move to a Gen 8 car. His answer was no, at least for now. The plan is to refine the Next Gen where necessary rather than start over, because a new generation would bring fresh costs and complications. In his view, the current platform has made team ownership and manufacturer involvement more sustainable, and that stability is worth protecting.
Kraft did not pretend the car is flawless. Its performance, he said, depends heavily on the track.
“Mile-and-a-half racing is okay, and short-track racing seems to be getting better when the tires wear out,” he explained.
Superspeedways drew his harshest words. He called the current product the worst version of Daytona and Talladega racing he had seen during his time in the Cup Series, a view plenty of drivers and fans share. Still, he ranked it below the broadcast issue.
The support series are on his radar too. Kraft voiced concern about the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series car and the Craftsman Truck Series platform. He expects no immediate changes, but sees both eventually heading in a different direction as NASCAR weighs the cost of aging equipment against the need to keep the racing competitive.
Kraft’s worry has numbers behind it. The 2025 season was the first under NASCAR’s current media-rights deal, with Cup races split among Fox, FS1, Prime Video, TNT and truTV, NBC and USA Network.
Streaming joined the regular mix, but fans now had to hunt across several platforms. The Cup Series averaged roughly 2.45 million viewers, a 15% drop from 2024 and the first season below 2.5 million.
Where races aired mattered. Sports Video Group reported that events that shifted from broadcast to cable fell 32% year over year, while races that stayed on broadcast rose 3%.
That gap does not prove cable alone caused the slide. Scheduling, competition from other sports and the arrival of streaming all play a part. But it explains why reach keeps coming up: a broadcast network can put a race in front of viewers who have no cable subscription or streaming login.
Fox offers a useful contrast, as its races averaged 3.2 million viewers in 2025, essentially level with 3.22 million the year before, according to BlackBook Motorsport.
The pattern has carried into 2026. The 2025 playoffs struggled most, averaging 1.87 million viewers, the lowest figure on record. This year the Cup Series is averaging 2.431 million through 33 races, down 1.4% from the same point in 2025, so the slide has slowed but not reversed.
The October 18 Phoenix race drew 1.294 million viewers on USA Network, down from 1.8 million for last year’s Roval event. Fox and NBC broadcasts average 4.094 million, while FS1, TNT and USA telecasts average 1.980 million.
NASCAR’s television audience has faced pressure before
NASCAR has been here before. Sports Business Journal reported that the Cup Series averaged 7.855 million viewers in 2006 and 5.992 million in 2010, a 23.7% decline. The media landscape has changed enormously since, so the comparison is imperfect. It does show that protecting the audience has been a long-running concern, and that an audience, once lost, is hard to win back.
Streaming is not simply a problem to solve. Prime Video’s audience skewed younger, with a median age of 55.8 compared with 61.9 for Cup races on linear television.
Its Coca-Cola 600 telecast also drew 2.72 million viewers on Amazon Prime, above the 2024 cable average of 2.2 million. The challenge is growing that younger crowd without giving up the reach broadcast provides.
O’Donnell addressed the audience in his remarks. He described NASCAR’s television audience as consistently strong, acknowledged that growing it is an industry-wide priority, and stressed the need to connect with new generations of fans.
Audience growth is clearly part of the strategy, even if NASCAR does not share Kraft’s read on the current situation.
Kraft’s argument is really about order of operations. A better race only helps if people can find it. He was clear that the Next Gen needs work, particularly at superspeedways, but he did not call it the worst development in NASCAR history.
Fans will forgive a flawed race more readily than one they cannot find. NASCAR faces two linked jobs: improving what fans see on track and making sure they can easily find it on television.
