The Great Chicago Street Race returns for a third year – on new channels
TNT, CW takes over from NBC thanks to new NASCAR deal
The Chicago Street Race will return for a third year to Downtown Chicago but there will be some changes on where you can watch the event on TV.
NASCAR and the city made it official on Thursday. “The Chicago Street Race Weekend has quickly become one of the highlights of the Chicago summer calendar, so we are proud to bring NASCAR back to this great city for a third year in a row,” said Chicago Street Race President Julie Giese in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to build on the tremendous success of 2023 and 2024 to deliver one of the most unique sporting events in the country and continuing to help drive tourism to Chicago.”
The new broadcast homes were revealed just minutes after the announcement was made. TNT announced through its Twitter account it would carry the NASCAR Cup Chicago Street Race on July 6. Later, The CW released its schedule of races with the Xfinity version taking place a day earlier. This year, both races aired on NBC, and in 2022, USA carried the inaugural Xfinity race, with NBC carrying the NASCAR Cup. In Chicago, the Xfinity race will air on WGN-TV, who’ll join The CW full-time Saturday.
The new broadcast homes are a result of NASCAR’s $7.7 billion media deals with The CW acquiring the entire Xfinity series and the NASCAR Cup moving several races to TNT and streamer Amazon Prime, reducing the number of races on Fox and NBC. This could’ve been worse for the Chicago Street Race, as the NASCAR Cup could’ve been regulated to streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Despite the abundance of cord-cutting, the number of homes in the Chicago area that have cable overindexes the national average according to a report in TVRev.
This is perhaps why the new Chicago Sports Network is launching as a traditional regional sports network in October, with over-the-air and streaming elements planned. Chicago is traditionally behind the curve for emerging platforms; cable TV didn’t arrive in Chicago until 1985 (delayed due to the “Council Wars” nonsense at City Hall), and it took nearly a decade for the entire city to be wired.
TNT now has two major Chicago events on tap – the Winter Classic on December 31 at Wrigley Field featuring the Chicago Blackhawks and the St. Louis Blues and the NASCAR Cup race.
The race has been controversial as Loop residents have complained about the days-long closures in and around the area. There is also lingering doubt the event generated substantial revenue for the city as the costs for preparing for the two races total $7.5 million in setup, police overtime, preparation, and staffing, according to South Side Weekly.
However, Chicago leaders point to the 3.87 million viewers the NASCAR Cup race attracted on NBC this year as one of the reasons the race is being brought back. But those numbers are down from 4.6 million the event earned last year and in Chicago, household ratings for the NASCAR Cup race declined 45 percent from 2023. The NASCAR Cup races for both years were impacted by rain, perhaps cutting into the numbers. Attendance, including a sparsely attended fan festival, was also down for the weekend.
The move of the NASCAR Cup race would be hard-pressed to deliver the diminished audiences it did this year as cord-cutting takes hold. Also, TNT has a little-known streaming service called Bleacher Report, and you would need a Max subscription and pay extra to access it. You wonder if city officials even knew about the new NASCAR TV deals reducing the event’s reach when they re-upped for another year.