This Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway, the Food City 500, will be shown live on Fox Sports 1 rather than the main Fox network. This marks the sixth straight weekend without a live Cup Series race on Fox.
The race is a 500-lap event at the high-banked, 0.533-mile oval in Bristol, Tennessee. It’s also part of a stretch of three consecutive weekends where the Cup Series is visiting tracks that will also feature in the playoffs.
Earlier in the season, Fox aired the first three races (four if you include the preseason Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium), but since then, coverage has shifted to Fox Sports 1. This change is due to NASCAR’s new seven-year, $7.7 billion media rights deal, which reduced Fox’s number of races from 18 (16 points-paying) to 14 (12 points-paying) for the 2025 season. As part of this deal, Fox Sports 1 is now airing the majority of Fox’s portion of races instead of the main Fox channel.
Following this weekend’s race, the series will pause for Easter before returning at Talladega Superspeedway, which will be broadcast on Fox. However, the final three races in Fox’s portion of the schedule will air on Fox Sports 1.
Later in the season, Amazon Prime Video and TNT Sports will each air five races before NBC takes over for the remainder of the year. NBC’s share has also been reduced from 20 to 14 races, with only four airing on NBC itself and the remaining 10 on USA Network.
