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- Four times more young male viewers tuned in to Road America compared to last year’s race
- Nashville race, which starts directly after World Cup final, “will be higher than Road America”
The Fifa World Cup helped IndyCar enjoy its biggest US television audience for a race other than the Indianapolis 500 for 15 years.
Fox’s coverage of the 2026 Grand Prix at Road America was scheduled immediately after a World Cup group stage clash between Spain and Saudi Arabia, with two thirds (64 per cent) of soccer viewers sticking around for the race, which averaged 1.8 million.
This was no accident. IndyCar and Fox have developed a concerted strategy designed to maximise the series’ visibility while the World Cup is on North American soil and use live soccer as a lead-in.
“[The strategy] started in December 2025 when the World Cup draw happened,” Bill Wanger, head of programming and scheduling at Fox Sports, told SportsPro.
“We knew what teams were playing in what windows… and then we took the next step of very purposely scheduling some IndyCar races after some World Cup games to really expose the racing series to new audiences.”
The race was particularly successful in retaining young male viewers. Wanger claimed that this demographic was four times higher than for the same race last year.
Fox, which became IndyCar’s exclusive broadcast partner in 2025, now owns one-third of the championship after acquiring a stake for a reported US$135 million in parent company Penske Entertainment.
The investment has led to a greater focus on marketing the series. For example, Fox aired three IndyCar advertisements during the Super Bowl last year and the series is being aired exclusively on an over-the-air (OTA) network for the first time.
IndyCar is currently averaging 1.7 million viewers through the first ten races, by far the highest mark at this point of the season in the series’ modern history.
The key measure of success will be how much of this new audience sticks around following the conclusion of the World Cup – but there still remains another tentpole moment in this strategy – IndyCar’s upcoming race in Nashville gets underway directly after the final.
“I’m not going to quote a number for what we think the Nashville race will do but it will be higher than what we just did with Road America,” said Wanger.
“We’ll have to go back a few years into the record books to see the highest-rated non-Indy 500 [race]… and again it’ll be a great opportunity to expose the racing series to new audiences and getting them to become fans and future viewers.”
SportsPro understands Fox’s broadcast deal with IndyCar is in place until 2030. And now that the network has a vested interest too, its sights will be firmly set on achieving sustainable long-term growth.
“I think we learned a lot in year one [of the contract], everything from a production standpoint and marketing and scheduling, and I think we built on that in year two quite a bit,” explained Wanger.
“We saw some viewership spikes that the Indy 500 hadn’t seen in years and so we’re really proud of that, and I think year after year we’re going to continue to work with IndyCar to grow the series.
“Whether that’s smart scheduling, more races throughout the year – it’s really just to grow the series as best as we can.”
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