Fox reports massive drop in viewership for Thermal Club race

Fox’s broadcast of IndyCar’s Thermal Club race on Sunday averaged just 704,000 viewers, down 50 per cent from the opening round of the season in St Petersburg earlier this month.

The viewership figures were compromised by the clashing NASCAR Cup Series event in Miami, which was broadcast on the sister Fox Sports 1 channel.

A small portion of the Thermal Club race was also affected by a circuit breaker failing in the TV compound, causing the stream to be blacked out for over 10 laps.

IndyCar had previously recorded 788,214 viewers for last year’s non-championship exhibition race at Thermal Club, which was officially branded as the $1 Million Challenge.

Hence, TV viewership for this year’s points-paying race was down by about 10 per cent from 2024, when NBC held the TV rights for IndyCar.

Fox took over the broadcast of IndyCar this year and has invested a sizeable amount in growing the series’ popularity in the US.

Apart from hiring Formula 1 presenter Will Buxton to lead its commentary team, it also showed an ad during this year’s Super Bowl event.

Fox initially enjoyed a surge in audience with the St Petersburg race, with 1.4 million viewers tuning in on average to watch Alex Palou take the win from Scott Dixon.

That marked the highest TV rating for an IndyCar round other than the Indianapolis 500 since the 2011 Las Vegas race in which Dan Wheldon was killed in an accident.