Fox Sports scores strong viewership for IndyCar season opener, best non-Indy 500 audience since 2011

Fox Sports’ first IndyCar race had 1.417 million viewers, making it the most-watched race in the series besides the Indianapolis 500 on any network since 2011.

Sunday’s race on the streets of downtown St. Petersburg had a 45% rise in viewers compared to last year’s race, which got 974,700 viewers on NBC.

The number of viewers peaked at 1,820,000 between 2:15 and 2:26 p.m. Ratings from specific local areas will be shared later this week.

This year, IndyCar ended its 16-year partnership with NBC Sports and signed a multi-year deal with Fox Sports, which promised strong production and more promotion. The campaign began in January with polished ads featuring three IndyCar drivers during the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl.

IndyCar has a strong connection with Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks, who is from Indiana and is passionate about the series and the Indianapolis 500. He said he wants to help bring IndyCar back to being one of the top motorsports.

Even with all the promotion — which included coverage during NASCAR’s Daytona 500 and other Fox Sports programs — Shanks told The Associated Press, “there will still be people Googling on Sunday, ‘What network is today’s IndyCar race on,’” — something he hopes to fix. All 17 races and both Indianapolis 500 qualifying rounds will be shown on Fox Sports, making IndyCar the only big motorsports series with every event on network TV.

Sunday’s race, where Alex Palou and Scott Dixon took the top two spots for Chip Ganassi Racing, stood out even more because NBC Sports includes streaming in its total audience number, while Fox does not, since that method isn’t recognized by Nielsen.

The race brought in 425,300 more viewers than NBC Sports and Fox said it was the most-watched IndyCar race on network TV in 14 years, not counting the Indy 500. The last time a race had more viewers was in 2011 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where Dan Wheldon died in a crash and 2,448,000 people tuned in on ABC.

Fox Sports said that Friday’s practice session, shown on its Fox Sports 1 cable channel, got 95,000 viewers.