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NASCAR’s Demo Derby

Amazon streamed its first NASCAR race over the weekend, drawing fewer, but more youthful, viewers than last year. Is this just a speed bump on the way to comprehensive live sports streaming? As one TV exec said, “Look, the fact is, there’s still a big moat between streaming and broadcast.”

NASCAR
Amazon Prime reported an average-minute audience of 2.72 million viewers for the Coke 600 in Charlotte—a figure well below broadcast averages, and on par with cable. Photo: Robert Laberge/Getty Images
John Ourand
May 29, 2025

Way back in 2001, a little cable channel called ESPN outbid NBC by $300 million to pick up rights to the NBA. Then-NBA commissioner David Stern decided to sacrifice the bigger audiences on broadcast TV for the guaranteed money and younger viewers on cable. It was one of the great masterstrokes of the Stern era, and a harbinger of the sports-on-cable era. A quarter-century later, leagues face a version of the same choice: Should they hitch their wagons to younger but smaller streamers, or stick with the remaining (and declining) mass audiences on broadcast?