DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Revenge threatened, viewership numbers for dirt races revealed | Daily 9-9-2025

What kind of viewership numbers do various racing series get on FloRacing? Saturday's outage gave us some clues. We'll dive in to that, plus Chris Madden has forgotten about RTJ and now wants a piece of Nick Hoffman, there is late model action tonight, and more. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, September 9th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

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I wanted to go back to Saturday night, and talk about the FloRacing outage that affected the platform for a couple of hours right in the middle of one of the biggest nights of dirt racing all season. We were right in the midst of the World 100 at Eldora, the Tuscarora 50 at Port Royal, and a number of other shows, including USAC and others. The default backup plan these days for both FloRacing and DIRTVision is for things to flip over to YouTube for free when there are outages. That keeps everyone watching while technical issues are sorted. In this case, Flo just went ahead and left the streams up even after the platform was brought back to normal operations. Long gone are the days of outages removing any viewership of the feeds, and even though you'll see a smattering of complaints on these nights, things are much better. What's interesting though, looking at the live YouTube numbers for Flo, is we can get an idea of what was popular on the night. Viewership for the World 100 nearly tripling that of the Tusky 50 at Port with the High Limit sprint cars. Those two though with dramatically larger audiences than the other shows. The World had 177, Port 65k, USAC sprint cars at Wheatland were third with 12k, then it was the IRA at Cedar Lake, NARC at Placerville, and finally the All Stars at Mercer. All the dirt shows with bigger audiences than weekly pavement racing at Berlin and Langley, and the CARS Tour West at Orange Show Speedway. Even at 177k though, the World stream just inside the top five biggest streaming audiences for Flo on YouTube. P1 is the Eldora Million sprint cars from 2023. That had well over 600k views. Then it's Chili Bowl 2025 at 472k, then 2021 World 100 heats, then Dream 29 heats, then this year's World. These are obviously not total audience sizes, because on Saturday, Flo did end up coming back and people were split between YouTube and Flo. For High Limit and the World though, those are solid viewership numbers. Going back to the High Limit TV broadcast on FS1 for Eldora, we know they got 239,000 viewers on the cable channel, with Adam Stern reporting that there was an additional 148k watching on FloRacing. For comparison though, NASCAR Cup races regularly draw a couple million TV viewers, the Xfinity Series usually around a million. That same weekend High Limit was on FS1, motocross got 926k viewers, IndyCar 734k, and NHRA 673k. So even with the added Flo numbers, High Limit still just only a little better than half the NHRA viewers. And remember, the NHRA's deal with FOX Sports is not particularly lucrative. An Autoweek story about the NHRA's deal said in 2023 quote "The FOX contract, while great for exposure, is not a big revenue generator for the series or the teams" unquote. I don't know that that's a good sign for the future prospects of dirt racing on television, outside a handful of possible special events each season. But for the streaming services that have become the backbone of viewing for the sport, these are really solid numbers. What we don't know about that 148k number for High Limit on Flo, is if that is accounts tuned in, or if they use some sort of multiplier to estimate actual viewers. Like if I have one account, but three people are watching. Some quick math though with the Flo subscription prices, and you can get at least some general range of their streaming revenue for the year. Let me know what you think about these numbers, do they seem big, small, and what about the breakdown by event from Saturday night? Do any of those surprise you? Drop your comments below.

As an additional sidebar here, we know that the World 100 was sold out on Saturday night. They eventually stopped selling even GA tickets and pit passes. Overhead photos show the place absolutely packed and it shows the dichotomy the sport is currently dealing with. The big events continue to be big, thinking about the Dream, the World, the Knoxville Nationals, Kings Royal, etc. But weekly programs and tracks continue to struggle, and all sorts of factors have been blamed. And that includes the streaming services at the top of the list.

Did you see the Kevin Kovac, FloRacing story today about Chris Madden and Nick Hoffman's run-in late in the World 100 feature? The two made contact around 10 to go, and Madden needed a trip to the infield to sort his car out. He ended up 13th after running at the front the whole race, while Hoffman finished on the podium with right front damage. We could just barely see the incident on the broadcast, with Madden holding Hoffman low into turn one. In the story, Hoffman said it was either hit the wall or Madden, and hitting Madden was easier. As for the other side, Madden told Kovac quote "He's just a complete idiot every time I race with that guy. He just tore the whole left front off of it. He's nowhere near making the pass. He just runs you over. He's not good enough to race by you" unquote. Madden also saying quote "The guys got no respect for nobody. I mean, that guys got one coming, I can tell you that. You can print it, you can mark it, you can do whatever you want. He's got one coming" unquote. Does Chris Madden get along with anyone at this point? We've seen him chest to chest with Brandon Overton. We've seen him sparring with Ricky Thornton Jr. And now he wants to come after Nick Hoffman. For a guy that doesn't race very much these days, he sure finds himself in the middle of these deals a lot. To his credit though, he's still fast. He was good all weekend at the World, ran really well with the Outlaws at Cedar Lake, and back to back Lucas weekends at the Topless and Port Royal. He's also got three Southern Nationals wins this year. Madden's schedule doesn't show him racing again until the Dirt Track World Championship, so he might have to wait six weeks to get that revenge on Hoffman. The only other races on Madden's slate for the year are World Finals.

If you want some dirt late model action tonight and tomorrow, check out the WISSOTA Challenge Series at I-94. They run the next two nights to settle the 2025 championship before the WISSOTA 100 weekend starts on Thursday. The top eight finishers in tomorrow's feature will clinch starting spots into Saturday's $10,000 to win finale. Dave Mass currently leads Shane Sabraski for the series championship, but only nine points separate them. These shows are featured over on the streaming schedule at dirtrackr.com/watchtonight if you can't get there and want to tune in.

That's the show for today. Don't forget, if you want even more dirt racing content, make sure to follow DIRTRACKR across social media. That means Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more. Wherever you are, so is DIRTRACKR.

Hope you guys have a great Tuesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!