NASCAR is No Match for Caitlin Clark

Getty Images Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes

NASCAR is working to grow its audience, expand its fan base, and leverage streaming services and social media to increase engagement. But they have no answer for Caitlin Clark, the superstar guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team.

Fueled by Clark’s unprecedented popularity, the Iowa-Connecticut women’s semifinal garnered 14.2 million viewers. It was the most-watched basketball game in ESPN history, including NBA games.  The women’s NCAA Championship game pits Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes against the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks. A battle of number ones.

The game will air on ABC, Sunday, April 7, at 3pm eastern time. Record ratings are expected. NASCAR’s Cook Out 400 at the Martinsville Speedway will be shown on FS1, also at 3pm eastern. There’s a good chance it will be the lowest rated NASCAR race of the year.

No Defense Against Caitlin Clark

The Iowa vs University of Connecticut game averaged 14.2 million viewers — and peaked at 17 million viewers. Richard Deitsch of The Athletic noted that the last NASCAR race to get more viewers was the Daytona 500. In 2013. This year’s Daytona 500, which got pushed to a Monday night due to rain, managed six million viewers. Less than half.

As Heavy revealed in a recent post, “ratings for NASCAR, which had been slumping, appear to now be on the upswing — and are easily besting other racing events.” True. And NASCAR has been moving aggressively to expand the available networks, channels, and streaming platforms for its races. This includes FOX Sports, NBC, Amazon Prime, TNT, and Peacock. Of course, this effort is partly due to the fact that there are so many sporting options available to viewers. As Heavy noted, “there’s a near-infinite amount of new content, including sports, scattered across ESPN, FuboTV, YouTube TV, Apple TV, and the like. The audience is fragmented.” In this era of fragmentation, NASCAR ratings range from about 3 million to 6 million. Respectable. In fact, select NASCAR races manage to be the most-watched sporting event on a given Sunday. But there is little defense against Caitlin Clark. Each of her NCAA March Madness games on ESPN and ABC have averaged just over 8 million viewers. It’s unlikely any NASCAR race in 2024 will match such numbers.

Today’s NASCAR races — and NASCAR drivers — have not been able to transcend the sport. Even the most popular drivers, Denny Hamlin, Bubba Wallace, Kyle Busch, for example, are little known outside of NASCAR. To be fair, very few athletes are able to achieve such a level of stardom beyond their sport’s fanbase. Caitlin Clark has achieved what almost no other athlete ever has. Maybe not since Michael Jordan has one player proved such a mega-popular, almost transcendent sports star.

A Break From NASCAR

Last Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 included a very controversial finish. A crash with two laps remaining led to an Overtime. A fortuitous pitstop and an aggressive restart allowed Denny Hamlin to take the victory. But many felt Hamlin should have been penalized for jumping the restart. More controversy ensued when Joey Logano, who finished second, went after NASCAR officials — and Hamlin. Still more controversy ensued a few days later when Hamlin got into a surprisingly public and personal argument with Marcus Smith over how Smith’s company manages several NASCAR racetracks.

Will all this controversy boost ratings for tomorrow’s Cook Out 400? Maybe. But this may be the race for even the most hardcore NASCAR fan to skip. It’s likely that the Iowa vs South Carolina women’s basketball game, for the NCAA championship, will be among the most watched shows on television for all of 2024. Certainly, it will be one of the most talked about sporting events of the year. If there was ever a valid excuse for sharing the television on a Sunday afternoon, this is it.