SMX & NBC’s 2024 Broadcast Data, IndyCar Comparison

Last week Feld Entertainment and MX Sports shared analytics of the 2024 broadcasts on NBC, with double-digit percentage increases in total audience delivery and minutes streamed across 31 events among the highlights.

The programming stats are telling, especially amid current television trends, and when paired with live attendance figures and online followers, it shows how SuperMotocross is part of the popularity boom that racing is experiencing.

In this SML News Break, I’ll go over some of the numbers of the past year, including most-watched races, spectator and broadcast totals, the importance of the earlier start times for West Coast rounds, and how the data compares to NBC’s other marquee motorsport.

The 31-round tour had over a million in-person attendees, with Supercross getting over eight hundred fifty-five thousand through the stadium turnstiles, another one hundred and sixty thousand all-day fans going to Pro Motocross, and roughly 100,000 more were at the SMX Playoffs.

Anaheim One, San Diego, and Salt Lake City happened in sold out stadiums, and new records were set at Detroit, Glendale, Arlington, and Daytona. Arlington was the highest attended event, with 67,319 in the seats at AT&T Stadium, while the Indianapolis through Denver stretch averaged 53,000 spectators per race.

More than 1.9 billion minutes of race content were streamed on Peacock, a 24% increase when compared to 2023. The total amount of live minutes watched on Peacock for Supercross alone totaled 720 million, and that was nearly a 30% increase over the year before.

The race with the most watch time was Daytona, with 40.7 million minutes seen live and another 11.6 million minutes through on-demand replays.

The top five most-streamed races on Peacock were Glendale, Daytona, Anaheim Two, Anaheim One, and San Diego.

2 million viewers watched a Supercross telecast on NBC, USA Network, and CNBC in 2024, up 24% from the audience reach in 2023.

The total audience delivery per broadcast across all platforms, including Peacock, NBC, and the USA Network, averaged out to 502,000, a 26% increase over 2023.

Washougal was the most-watched race since 2021, with 1.1 million viewers seeing the action across all platforms, which included the live broadcast that was featured on NBC’s linear network.

Three things from 2024 seemed telling of NBC’s investment in SuperMotocross and the sport’s willingness to capture to a television audience. The first was moving the start time of West Coast Supercross races up from 7PM to 5PM local time, a change that got each broadcast in the primetime viewing windows for the Eastern and Central time zones. This will carry over into 2025.

The second was the entire Detroit round, because sending the series on a cross-country trip and putting the 450 Class Heats first in the race order was all about making the most of an afternoon slot on the major NBC channel in February. The effort had its merits, as 704,000 viewers made it the largest linear audience of the Supercross season, while streaming numbers boosted the grand total to over a million views.

The third was the use of drones, a complex issue that required clearance from the teams, stadium officials, and the FAA, but has proved to be an important icebreaker for NBC and their coverage of NFL games in the same venues. You can hear more about the use of drones in an interview with Tim Phend, the director of broadcast operations for SMX, that is at the end of this video.

On their own, the numbers are solid, but more context comes through when they’re compared to IndyCar.

America’s biggest form of open-wheel racing has status, thanks to its events and history with an international field of racers and team owners that have diverse corporate backing, and it’s spent the past sixteen years in a media rights agreement with NBC.

A similar release of Adobe Analytics and Nielsen numbers by the series in 2023 hyped a third consecutive year of growth and showed an average Total Audience Delivery of 1.32 million viewers across NBC, USA Network, Peacock and NBC Sports digital platforms, The Indianapolis 500 alone captured nearly five million viewers on NBC and Peacock. However, the overall increase in television audience size for all races compared to the year prior was only two percent.

The series has not released numbers for 2024, which could be for multiple reasons, including a highly publicized move to Fox Sports in 2025 or viewership stagnation.

Although neither number has been formally announced, the current agreement between NBC and SMX, now entering year three of five, is said to be worth about the same as what the network paid IndyCar, which was, reportedly, 20 million dollars a year.

While the typical TV numbers of SMX are a fraction of what IndyCar produces, things like double-digit growth, the important 18-34 demographic, and an audience that knows to go to a streaming site are where the value comes from. Highlight videos on the NBC Motorsports YouTube page for all 31 rounds of SMX totaled over 11 million views and averaged 380,000 per video, while the same content from IndyCar’s 18 races amassed three million views and averaged about 167,000 per video. Supercross and Motocross also have larger social media audiences, a difference of about 7.5 million followers to IndyCar’s 1.8 million.

Live sports and the audiences they draw play an important factor in the television business, and for motorsports especially, the shift to streaming has been a big win, as the investment by broadcasters to get a share of an audience means more racing is happening and viewers are reliably tuning in in recording setting numbers.

SuperMotocross will be one of a few motorsports on NBC in 2025, and, given the growth from consistent scheduling and the amount of content produced, it’ll be interesting to see how the series is integrated into Peacock, as every race will again be shown live on the streaming service while television broadcasts will be split between NBC, CNBC, and the USA Network.