NASCAR’s 2025 championship race drew fewer television viewers than last year’s finale, and driver Denny Hamlin says the sport needs to address what he calls a growing relevance problem.
Sunday’s title race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida earned a 1.37 television rating and averaged 2.471 million viewers, according to figures cited by NASCAR observers. That marks a nearly 11% drop from last year’s championship race, which was held at Phoenix Raceway in Arizona. Across the full 2025 season, overall viewership was down 2%.
Kyle Larson won the championship at Homestead, taking his third NASCAR title.
Hamlin’s response
Hamlin, one of NASCAR’s most prominent drivers, addressed the ratings decline on his podcast, Actions Detrimental, shortly after Sunday’s race.
“We have got to find a way to grow this thing and make it more relevant in the sports landscape, because it’s just falling behind others in my opinion,” Hamlin said.
Hamlin argued that NASCAR’s championship format — which rewards a season-long body of work rather than a single head-to-head showdown — is not the core problem, even though some fans and commentators have pointed to the car and the playoff structure as reasons for declining interest.
“Our sport is different. It’s not this one-v-one and it’s either you or me, you know, and so we have to just embrace that this is what we wanted,” Hamlin said. “It’s our jobs as a sport to make it relevant in sports.”
NASCAR overhauled its playoff format for 2025 after criticism of the previous system, which fans and analysts had called too gimmicky following Joey Logano’s championship two years ago.
The car, and the bigger issue
Fans have also been vocal about dissatisfaction with NASCAR’s current Next Gen car, which critics say is too slow and doesn’t resemble a traditional stock car. But Hamlin said that’s not the central issue either.
“It ain’t the car or the format,” Hamlin said. “It’s much bigger than that. It’s way bigger than that.”
Hamlin pointed instead to promotion, saying NASCAR does not do enough to market races outside of the season-opening Daytona 500.
“I know we tried the whole midweek night races thing, but there was no promotion behind that at all,” Hamlin said. “Why can’t we own Thursday night in the summer? You know, when it’s just baseball? … I’d love to see us try to own a night of the week during the summer when there’s not much other sports on.”
Hamlin suggested NASCAR should focus on scheduling races during the spring and summer months, when the sport faces less competition from other major sports, rather than running deep into the fall against football season.
NASCAR has not announced any schedule changes in response to Hamlin’s comments. The sport’s offseason is underway, with the next Cup Series season expected to begin in the coming months.
