Scott Fowler: Prime time on NASCAR: Amazon Prime set to broadcast the Coca-Cola 600

Scott Fowler, The Charlotte Observer on May 22, 2025

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — What channel is the race on?

This has been a common question from NASCAR fans for years, given the alphabet soup of networks on which the sport’s top series air: Fox Sports, NBC, TNT, USA, The CW, FS1 and so on.

But the answer to that question on Sunday, for the Coca-Cola 600, will be different than it’s ever been before.

The Coke 600 isn’t on a traditional channel at all. It’s streaming — yes, streaming — on Amazon Prime.

Yes, race fans: If you’re absolutely intent on watching the longest race in the NASCAR Cup Series, make sure you’ve got the Amazon Prime app on your TV or phone, or go ahead and sign up for a free trial if you don’t. It’s Prime time for racing, whether you’re ready or not.

How many race fans are going to be surprised on Sunday afternoon and shut out of this broadcast for a while? That’s uncertain, because Amazon doesn’t say what percentage of households in America have bought the Amazon Prime streaming service (and the corresponding package delivery service by all those ubiquitous trucks). Estimates often hover in the 70-80% range, however.

NASCAR commissioner Steve O’Donnell is confident race fans are going to wade into the stream. As he told The Charlotte Observer recently: “It’s a myth that our fans are not already on Amazon.”

Or, as NASCAR Hall of Famer Carl Edwards said in a recent conference call to promote the upcoming Prime telecast: “I was on the phone with a farmer that owns some neighboring property of ours (in Missouri). And he says: ‘Hey, you’re doing some sort of TV thing?’ I was thinking, ‘This guy is 85 years old. I’m gonna have to explain this to him.’ And I started to, and he’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve got Prime. I’ll be watching.’ ”

As to why NASCAR has signed a deal for its next five Cup races to air on Amazon Prime, O’Donnell said: “It’s important for us to be on another platform. We see Amazon as an opportunity to get the sport out to different audiences and grow its visibility.”

Once you get to this unfamiliar home of racing at 5 p.m. Sunday for the pregame show — the race itself starts shortly after 6 p.m. — you will see a lot of familiar faces. Former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. will highlight the broadcast crew, alongside his former crew chief Steve Letarte and play-by-play race announcer Adam Alexander. They are all veterans of broadcasting live NASCAR events on other networks.

Edwards and many others are also involved in the broadcast, which will feature more than 70 cameras and a variety of bells and whistles. Perhaps most important to race fans will be the “double-box” commercial format, which means that viewers will never miss any action because the commercials during the actual race will only take up roughly half the screen.

Now if you think Amazon is going to mess this up, I suppose it’s possible. But it’s not like Amazon Prime hasn’t already made serious inroads into the sports broadcast industry already. Amazon has been streaming NFL games — usually on Thursday nights — since 2022.

I often turn those Thursday night Amazon games on in the third quarter and particularly enjoy the “rapid recap” feature, which allows you to see all the key plays so far in a two-minute span and then drops you into the live action. Sunday’s NASCAR broadcast will also employ that same option.

Earnhardt Jr. is heavily involved with Amazon. A four-part documentary about his father, Dale Earnhardt Sr., debuts on Amazon on May 22 and will show his dad’s “human side,” according to Dale Jr. And he will also be one of the stars of the live TV broadcast of the Coke 600.

Said Earnhardt of the upcoming race telecast: “I think as we all know, streaming has become more and more popular. ... A lot of homes are gravitating toward streaming and so I don’t know that it’s going to be that big of a transition. ... But I would say you could look at the Thursday night football coverage and I think that would be a good way to look at what Amazon’s race coverage might be like. ... At the same time, there will be a lot of things that are traditional, in terms of the three-man booth or the faces you may see.”

The worst-case scenario for Amazon, of course, would be a situation where the telecast was glitchy. The people in charge don’t think that will be a problem, though. We’ll see. Certainly, the viewership for the Coca-Cola 600 won’t rival that of Thursday night football (the NFL pummels every other American pro sports league in terms of TV ratings).

But locating the “channel” for this race and for the next four Cup races as well?

That will undoubtedly be a bit of a learning curve, no matter how much pre-promotion is done. The good news?

The Coca-Cola 600 is the longest race on NASCAR’s circuit every year. So you’ll have plenty of time to find it.

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Lydia Craver contributed to this report.