Denny Hamlin Exposes “NASCAR’s Greed” Amidst Massive TV Rating Drop

Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Denny Hamlin has blamed NASCAR’s greed for the massive drop in the race viewership in the 2025 season.

Denny Hamlin Exposes “NASCAR’s Greed” Amidst Massive TV Rating Drop

Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick (Via IMAGO)

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The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season so has been a disaster in terms of TV ratings. With sport being broadcasted by two different Cable TV channels and two streaming giants as part of the new $1.1 billion a year deal, the overall viewership has seen a massive drop. JGR veteran Denny Hamlin is infuriated with this.

Ahead of the new deal was in place, NASCAR was showing slow but positive signs of a come back with the rating, before the sport took fans for granted and decided to have broadcasted via four different platforms. Now the viewership numbers of Cup series have reached Xfinity series level, as they lost over 1.15M playoffs viewers.

It’s coming in a time where NFL is marking new record viewership’s, with an average of 17.5 million viewers per game. On the latest episode of Actions Detrimental podcast, Denny Hamlin pointed out that this drop is the product NASCAR greed and the sanctioning body chasing the money bag over the deal that would’ve guaranteed them more viewership.

In each one of the TV deals that we’ve signed over the last few years or the past few agreements that we’ve had, we’ve always just taken the most amount of money… It’s not been about ‘What’s going to put us on in the most households’

Denny Hamlin said via Actions Detrimental.

The situation has become so bad, as the TV partners are using NASCAR as their guinea pigs too launch new Channels, using it as the way to attract new fans to the platforms.  Cup races being shifted to FS1 instead of Fox Sports, the main channel, is a major example of it. They are asking too much of the racing fans by asking them to watch races in different network every week.

We were the guinea pigs to get Channel X off the ground, Channel Y off the ground. And you’re asking so much of your fans to just keep chasing you around all these different networks.

Denny Hamlin added.

Denny Hamlin has a plan to fix it, but Kevin Harvick won’t like It

In the same podcast, the JGR star driver pointed out that the issue with rating can be fixed by changing the schedule. He wants NASCAR races to move from Sunday to Saturday, avoiding the competition with NFL.

Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin
Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin (Via IMAGO)

I’m just saying it’s not a school night. It definitely would be harder for those who travel, so you don’t want to just alienate them. I’m just brainstorming here.

Denny Hamlin explained.

While the idea sounds rational, it is not as easy as it seems. Moving races from Sunday, the prime hours, might affect the sports prestige and might also give IndyCar and F1 to attract more of the casual fans. Also, in the words of Kevin Harvick, it’s a Mon sense idea as historically rating has always been low for Saturday night races.

Why do we ever race on a Saturday night? It makes no sense. Makes zero sense. Just look at the TV ratings when you get done. I know it’s football season, but the TV ratings are historically completely well known by everybody in the industry that it does not score ever, ever, ever, ever on a Saturday night.

Kevin Harvick said few weeks ago on his podcast.

Both Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick got some solid points. But it’s better to keep NASCAR racing on Sunday and fix the major issue, the confusion over the broadcasting network. But it’s easier said that done considering how huge the current media deal is.

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