To probably no one’s surprise, racing takes a back seat to football, both pro and college, this time of year.
But here’s something you might have missed, Big 10 women’s volleyball is a big deal. In fact, FOX followed up its 1 p.m. football menu on Sunday with women’s college volleyball, and volleyball held its own in the TV ratings.
Women’s college volleyball pulled a 0.9 rating and 1,659,000 viewers on average for the 4:50 p.m. ET broadcast on FOX. Those viewer numbers were bigger than the the Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix and NHRA Nevada Nationals from Las Vegas … combined.
The NASCAR Cup Series Xfinity 500 Playoff race at Martinsville on NBC led the racing TV leaderboard for the week with 2.196 million viewers, but that was down 13.6% year over year. The same race last year drew 2.541 million viewers on NBC.
The ratings are posted over at SportsMediaWatch.com.
Note that only events drawing at least 150,000 viewers on average are listed.
Racing action we watched this past weekend:
- NASCAR Cup Series Xfinity 500 at Martinsville (Sunday, 2:15 p.m. ET, NBC), 1.2 rating, 2.196 million viewers
- Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix (Sunday, 2:30 p.m. ET, ABC), 0.6, 1.080 million viewers
- NHRA Nevada Nationals (Sunday, 5 p.m. ET,. FS1), 0.11, 175,000 viewers
- Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix Practice 1 (Friday, 2:25 p.m. ET, ESPN2), 0.14, 232,000 viewers
- Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix Practice 2 (Friday, 5:55 p.m. ET, ESPN2), 0.13, 231,000 viewers
Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.
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