NHRA's 2027 TV map in one picture: FOX Sports, FloRacing and The CW. (Image: NHRA)
For a decade, NHRA’s TV identity fit in one sentence: FOX and FS1, with a handful of broadcast-network dates sprinkled in for good behavior. Starting in 2027, it takes a paragraph. NHRA announced on Sept. 30 that its Mission Foods Drag Racing Series will be split across FOX Sports, The CW Network and FloSports, with the championship-deciding end of the season moving to The CW and every live qualifying session moving to a FloRacing subscription.
NHRA’s headline number is reach: more than 125 million households and, by the sanctioning body’s count, the most over-the-air broadcasts in its history. That part is real. So is the other part fans will notice by about February: following a full season now means juggling three partners and at least as many apps.
Who gets what in 2027
- FOX Sports (races 1–13): The first 13 of 20 national events, starting with the Winternationals at Pomona on Feb. 18–21. Coverage is a mix of the FOX broadcast network and FS1, streaming on FOX One, with Sunday eliminations plus qualifying highlight and recap shows.
- The CW (races 14–20): Exclusive race-day broadcast home for the final seven events, opening with the U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park and running through all six Countdown to the Championship playoff races. Sunday eliminations also stream on the ESPN app for ESPN Unlimited subscribers.
- FloRacing (all 20 races): A five-year deal makes FloRacing NHRA’s exclusive subscription streaming partner, with every qualifying session live at every national event plus Sunday eliminations for Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle.
Four network races was the ceiling for ten years
The case for this deal lives in an old FOX contract. When NHRA signed with FOX in July 2015, the package guaranteed four events a season on the FOX broadcast network, with the rest of the Sunday eliminations shows on FS1. NHRA also took over production in-house, which is why the telecasts have looked and sounded like the sport’s own product ever since.
Fast-forward to the 2026 schedule and the network count is… still four: the Potomac Nationals, New England Nationals, Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals and Northwest Nationals, plus a FOX/FS1 split at Indy. Sixteen races lived on FS1, including four of the six Countdown dates, among them the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals.
That matters because NHRA’s own numbers show what broadcast TV does for it. NHRA said its most-watched telecast on record averaged 2.065 million viewers for Sunday eliminations on FOX. That number came from the broadcast network, not cable. Putting all seven of the season’s most important races on a free, over-the-air network is the clearest bet NHRA could make that its ceiling is a distribution problem, not an interest problem.
This didn’t come out of nowhere. In March 2025, NHRA hired Octagon as its content strategy and media rights advisor, noting at the time that the FOX agreement ran through 2026. Eighteen months later, the result is a portfolio instead of a single landlord.
Indy changes channels, and still runs on Monday
The CW’s first NHRA broadcast is the big one. The network debuts with U.S. Nationals eliminations on Monday, Sept. 6, 2027, which is Labor Day, keeping the race’s traditional Monday finish. That makes Indy the handoff point: the last regular-season race, the event that sets the Countdown field, and now the first race on a new network.
There’s a structural upside here too. Under the old setup, the regular season and the playoffs mostly shared a channel, so nothing on screen marked the moment the season changed character. In 2027, the Countdown gets its own network for its whole run, including its lead-in. If NHRA and The CW want the playoffs to feel like a separate act, the calendar now does half the work.
Why The CW wants nitro
The CW, owned by Nexstar, says it now runs roughly 700 hours of live sports a year, including the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, college football and basketball, WWE NXT, PBR and the PBA. NHRA gives it another motorsports property for the fall stretch, and the network’s sports boss isn’t hiding the plan.
“Beginning next fall, these seven adrenaline-packed NHRA playoff races will pair perfectly with the action of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, making weekends on The CW the premier television home for all racing enthusiasts.”
Mike Perman, senior vice president, CW Sports
Translation: a racing block. Pairing NASCAR’s second tier with NHRA’s playoffs gives The CW a weekend identity it can sell to advertisers who already speak fluent motorsport. The trade-off for NHRA: in 2026, FOX parked a Countdown event next to professional football for the sixth straight season, a lead-in no other drag racing window can match. The CW can’t offer that. The bet is that being on free TV every playoff weekend is worth more than one big football lead-in.
The catch: count your subscriptions
If you watch only Sunday eliminations, 2027 is simple: FOX or FS1 (or FOX One) through race 13, then an antenna or a CW channel for the final seven, with the ESPN app as a backup for ESPN Unlimited subscribers.
If you’re the kind of fan who wants to see who stumbled in Q2 or who ran low with a borrowed tune-up, your Friday and Saturday now run through FloRacing. Qualifying is exclusive to Flo at every national event, and FloSports says current NHRA.tv subscribers will be moved over after December 2026, with details to come. Pricing wasn’t part of the announcement.
A few things the releases didn’t answer:
- Who produces the CW and Flo shows? NHRA has produced its own telecasts since 2016. None of the three announcements says whether that continues on the new partners.
- Is there any TV qualifying during the Countdown? FOX’s package includes qualifying highlight shows for its 13 races. The CW is described as the race-day home, with no qualifying show mentioned.
- What about the support classes? FloSports’ announcement names only the four pro categories. Pro Mod, Factory Stock and sportsman racing aren’t mentioned.
What it means in the pits
Sponsorship in drag racing runs on screen time, and the Countdown is where the most expensive screen time lives. Brands already treat the playoffs as a marketing event in their own right, as Dodge’s Purple Haze liveries showed this fall. Promising a sponsor that its car will be on free broadcast TV for the entire playoff run is a much easier sale than promising cable.
Timing helps, too. Teams are building 2027 programs right now, and Tony Stewart Racing’s Top Fuel plan is one example. A clear map of where the playoffs will air, and on which network, is the kind of detail that moves a marketing budget from “maybe” to “signed.”
What to watch next
The real test is the 2027 TV schedule. How many of FOX’s 13 races land on the broadcast network rather than FS1? What time slots does The CW give the Countdown when college football and NASCAR are also asking for weekend space? And what does FloRacing charge a fan who just wants to see Friday night qualifying from Pomona? The 2027 race calendar is already set. The time slots will show how well this three-way setup actually works.
NHRA President Glen Cromwell called it “a truly major moment” for the sport. He’s right on scale. Whether it’s a major moment for the fan holding the remote depends on details nobody has published yet.
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