Music City Grand Prix is NBC’s most-watched IndyCar race on cable ever – IndyStar

IndyCar and NBC made yet another batch of history Sunday, crashes and red flags be damned.

The Music City Grand Prix, one of the more divisiveraces in recent years, and no doubt the most highlyanticipated IndyCar venue debut in a decade, registered as the most-watched IndyCar race on NBC's cable channels ever, averaging an audience of 1.212 million over the early-evening broadcast that featured nine cautions, two red flags, 33 laps run under yellow and a driver who first took flight and then took the checkered flag.

In a narrow victory over his teammate Scott Dixon, and after a riveting battle with Colton Herta, Marcus Ericsson brought Chip Ganassi to victory lane for the fifth time in just 11 races so far in the 2021 season, marking the Swedish driver's second win of his IndyCar career and second in five races. More than 60,000 watched him complete the feat in-person around the streets of Nashville, with the crowd that watched him over the airwaves topping NBC's previously most-watched IndyCar race on NBC Sports:the 2016 Mid-Ohio race that averaged 934,000.

It gives this campaign two of NBC's four most-watched IndyCar races on cable ever coming in 2021, along with the race at Road America earlier this summer that averaged 807,000 fans.

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Sunday's race also came in as the most-watched IndyCar race on any cable channel since the 1998 CART season, when a race drew 2.218 million on ESPN. It also out-drew three races from earlier this season on network TV, including the GMR Grand Prix (1.033 million) Barber (921,000) and Detroit Race 1 (845,000).

The Nashville mark also dwarfs IndyCar's average cable viewership from 2020 (432,000) and 2019 (423,000). Through four races in 2021, NBC Sports is averaging total audience delivery of 761,000 per race, up considerably on the first four in 2020 (362,000) and 2019 (397,000).

The Music City Grand Prix TV rating follows IndyCar's historic Mid-Ohio race, where the series registered NBC's most-watched non-Indy 500 race ever, averaging an audience of 1.303 million, as well as the news last month of a new three-year broadcast deal that will see NBC air 13 IndyCar races on NBC in 2022, along with one exclusively on its Peacock streaming service and the rest on USA Network, along with simulcast races on Peacock, among other important additions to IndyCar's growing digital footprint.

More 2021 IndyCar TV ratings details:

Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown atnlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter:@By_NathanBrown.

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Music City Grand Prix is NBC's most-watched IndyCar race on cable ever - IndyStar