The first season of NASCAR on Amazon Prime Video performed as expected, with across-the-board growth among younger demos offset by a sharp decline among older viewers.
The five-race NASCAR Cup Series package on Amazon Prime Video — the Coca-Cola 600, Michigan, Nashville, Mexico City and Pocono — averaged 2.16 million viewers, per the Nielsen “Big Data” metric, down 16% from the same five race weekends last year, which aired on FOX and FS1 (Coca-Cola 600, St. Louis, Sonoma, Iowa and New Hampshire: 2.56M). Keep in mind last year’s Coca-Cola 600 was impacted by rain.
Though down overall, the Prime Video package posted across-the-board gains in the key young adult demographics, with viewership up 36, 19 and 28 percent respectively in adults 18-34 (233K), 18-49 (601K) and 25-54 (807K). In addition, viewership soared 93 percent among teens 12-17, though the raw audience figure was a mere 56,000.
The growth among young viewers was offset by a sharp decline among viewers over 55, as viewership in that demo declined 36 percent — from 1.79 million last year to 1.14 million this year. Viewers 55+ still made up slightly more than half of the audience (53%), but that was a reduction from the five equivalent races last year — when they accounted for more than two-thirds (70%).
Overall, the five Prime Video races had a median age of 56.1, compared to 62.8 for the other Cup Series races this season. As one would expect, the five races had the five youngest-skewing audiences of the season.
Read much more at Sports Media Watch.