FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer action and auto-racing events highlighted last week's sports ratings landscape. 

Fox’s July 26 coverage of the U.S. women’s soccer team’s draw against the Netherlands was the top viewed live sports event for the week of July 24-30 with an average of 6.43 million viewers, according to Nielsen numbers published by SportsMedia Watch. Telemundo’s Spanish-language telecast of the match also made the top 10 most-watched events for the week with 1.16 million viewers.

According to Fox Sports, Fox averaged a record 4.3 million viewers for its three U.S. Women’s soccer team telecasts during the Group Stage event, up 19 percent from 2019. 

Auto racing events secured four of the top 10 positions on the live sports viewership chart, with USA Network's July 30 live race and pre-race coverage of the NASCAR Cup series Cook Out 400 playoff event finishing third and fourth for the week, while NBC’s July 29th NASCAR Xfinity Road America 180 race and ESPN’s July 30 Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix pulled into sixth and ninth place, respectively. ESPN said the 1.16 million viewers for its Belgian Grand Prix telecast was the race's largest audience on record in the U.S. 

 This weekend’s spotlight on live sports programming starts in the boxing ring with Saturday’s Fox Sports-distributed Manny Pacquiao-Yordenis Ugas pay-per-view fight card. Pacquiao will be fighting the current welterweight champion after his original opponent, Errol Spence had to pull out of the fight earlier this month due to an eye injury.

Read Also: Manny Pacquiao-Errol Spence PPV Fight KO'd

ESPN on Saturday will offer mixed martial arts action with a UFC Fight Night card headlined by the Jared Cannonier-Kelvin Gastelum middleweight bout. 

In other sports, ESPN and ABC will offer coverage of the Little League Baseball World Series on Saturday and Sunday. On the pro side, ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball will feature the Los Angeles Angels-Cleveland Indians matchup.

On the auto race track, Fox will provide live coverage of the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals, while on the greens CBS and Golf Channel will offer weekend coverage of the PGA Northern Trust tournament. 

On the soccer field, ABC Saturday will feature a Bundesliga League matchup between Bayer 04 Leverkusen vs. Borussia Mönchengladbach, USA Network and NBC will offer Premier League action, and Fox, ESPN, and FS1 will televise Major League Soccer games. On Sunday, NBCSN will televise a Premier League soccer doubleheader.

This weekend’s list of live TV sports telecasts begins on the soccer field with the launch of the 2021-22 Premier League season. On Saturday USA Network will air the Everton-Southampton match while NBC telecasts the Norwich City-Liverpool game. NBCSN will air two live Premier League soccer matches each on Saturday and Sunday.

Also, Fox on Saturday will air the La Galaxy-Minnesota Major League Soccer game as well as the Liga MX contest between Pachuca and Monterrey. On Sunday ABC airs a La Liga league match between Real Sociedad and Barcelona. 

In other sports, ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball's matchup showcases two longtime National League rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets.

Showtime will step into the boxing ring Saturday night with a bantamweight championship bout between John Riel Casimero and Guillermo Rigondeaux, while ESPN airs a super flyweight bout between champion Joshua Franco and Andrew Moloney. DAZN will also stream a fight card featuring a main event bout between welterweights Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Egidijus Kavalisauskas. 

On the golf links, CBS and Golf Channel will air final round coverage of the PGA Wyndham Championship, and NBC will air Saturday semifinal and Sunday championship coverage of the US Amateur tournament. 

ESPN2 and NBA TV will offer afternoon and evening coverage of NBA Summer League games on Saturday and Sunday, while ABC offers Sunday afternoon coverage of the WNBA game between Seattle and Chicago. 

Read Also: ESPN to Cover NBA Summer League Games 

From the racetrack, NBC on Sunday will air live coverage of the NASCAR Cup Verizon 200 at the Brickyard race, and Fox will televise the NHRA Menards Nationals race. 

The prestigious Kentucky Derby and a big heavyweight pay-per-view boxing match highlight the live sports events ushering in the first weekend of May. 

The first leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown takes place Saturday as NBC provides live coverage of the Kentucky Derby. This year’s race comes eight months after the 2020 Kentucky Derby race, which was moved to Sept. 5 from May 2 due to the pandemic. 

Fox Sports on Saturday will tee up its first pay-per-view boxing event of the year, headlined by the Andy Ruiz Jr.-Chis Arreola heavyweight division fight. Prior to the PPV card, Fox broadcasting will televise the Erislandy Lara-Thomas LaManna middleweight boxing match.

Also on Saturday, ESPN2 will step into the Octagon with coverage of a UFC Fight Night mixed martial arts fight card, headlined by the Dominick Reyes-Jiri Prochazka light heavyweight fight.  

Also Read: UFC Moves Forward with July Conor McGregor-Dustin Poirier PPV Event

On the soccer field, NBCSN will offer five live Premier League game telecasts across two days, while NBC will provide Saturday afternoon coverage of the Fulham-Chelsea Premier League  contest. On Sunday, MLS takes the field with live game telecasts on ESPN (Inter Miami CF-Nashville SC) and FS1 (LA Galaxy at Seattle.)

Also Read: Super League is Super Done

CBS will deliver to golf fans live weekend coverage of the PGA Valspar Championship tournament, while auto racing fans can catch Sunday action on ESPN (Formula One’s Portuguese Grand Prix), FS1 (NASCAR Cup’s Bushy McBusch Race 400) and NBCSN (IndyCar Series’ XPEL 375).

NBC on Sunday will take to the ice for the Tampa Bay Lightning-Detroit Red Wings telecast, while ABC will hit the court to televise the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets-Milwaukee Bucks afternoon game. 

Also Read: Turner Sports Secures NHL TV Rights Deal

ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball telecast will feature the New York Mets visiting the Philadelphia Phillies.  

NASCAR officially re-starts its engines this Sunday (May 17) with its first live race since the sport suspended its schedule in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fox Sports will air The Real Heroes 400 race at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina -- part of an accelerated schedule that will feature May races at Darlington on May 20, Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 24 and May 27, as well as Bristol Motor Speedway on May 31.

With no fans allowed at the race as well as other track changes implemented to enhance the health and well-being of the drivers and crews, Fox Sports executive producer and EVP head of production & operations Brad Zager recently spoke to me about the network’s production strategy for the race. Zager also talks about the significance of NASCAR’s return and Fox Sports’ audience expectations in the interview, an edited version of which appears below.

In your opinion, how important is NASCAR’s return to the TV sports category?

I think it's a big weekend. There will be a lot of eyes on live sports coming back, and it's not just to see what happens on the track and who gets the checkered flag, but about doing big, live sports in this world we live in now that has changed so drastically in the last two months. There are so many eyeballs on the safety and health of everyone, and that was priority number one for us. Now that we’re here and have a plan, everyone is so excited that there will be an extra sense of normalcy that there is live sports for them to turn to and not have to look for a substitute for live sports programming that they craved for on the weekends.

How has the pandemic changed how you prepare for a live NASCAR event?

When you do a sport for over 20 years, there are certain typical expectations that things will get done as before because we’ve all worked together for so long. In the planning for this weekend we’re not taking anything for granted; every small detail has been thought of and vetted as if we’re doing NASCAR for the first time ever. It’s such a different layout that we can’t just rest on our past experiences.

From a production standpoint are you making any major alterations to Sunday's NASCAR race?

I think that the number one thing for the viewer will be a more aggressive take with the drone -- without a crowd we’ll have a little more leniency on where we can fly. We’ve always dealt with not being able to fly over people in the grandstands; if everything goes as planned we’ll be more aggressive and hopefully give people a different perspective with drone coverage. A lot of the stuff we’re doing, much like everything we do on the production side of the business, you hope is almost blind to the viewer. You can change a lot of different things with regard to how a show is produced, but you hope it never impacts what the viewer sees on air or how they feel about the coverage. Even though we had to go about this in a different way and will have less people at the track, it shouldn’t impact the viewing experience on Sunday based on what’s happening behind the scenes.

What are your viewership expectations for the race?

I think everybody is ready to bring sports back and to make your Sundays feel a little more like it should this time of the year. We expect the audience to be really engaged this weekend and excited to bring NASCAR back. It’s bigger than just NASCAR fans and racing fans -- we think a larger group will gravitate toward knowing that they could watch live sports this weekend.

Is Fox Sports prepared for what is an aggressive slate of NASCAR events over the next couple of weeks and do you believe that viewer excitement and anticipation for the sport will be sustained?

Someone on our production call joked that if viewers are looking for something to binge watch, they can binge on NASCAR given the upcoming schedule. The good part is we weren’t blindsided with the schedule. During the time when the sport wasn’t happening we worked with NASCAR to make sure that we were comfortable with the schedule. We were all in lockstep knowing when the schedule was announced that we were ready to roll and put NASCAR back on TV. 

NBC Sports has secured the rights to the Indianapolis 500 auto race as part of a new, multi-year, multi-platform rights agreement with Indycar.

The deal, which begins in 2019, calls for broadcast network NBC to carry the Indianapolis 500 race, which has aired on ABC since 1965. In addition, NBC Sports will carry seven additional Verizon IndyCar Series races on NBC ,with all remaining races televised on NBCSN, said NBC Sports.

NBC Sports will also offer an IndyCar-based direct-to-consumer product through its NBC Sports Gold OTT franchise, said company officials.

“We’re excited to have NBC Sports serve as the exclusive home of IndyCar, which represents the most competitive open-wheel racing in the world,” said Jon Miller, president of programming for NBC Sports and NBCSN in a statement. We’re honored to bring the Indianapolis 500, one of the most prestigious events in all of sports, to NBC, further enhancing NBC Sports’ Championship Season.”

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ESPN executive vice president of programming and scheduling Burke Magnus said in a statement: “We have had a wonderful and rewarding relationship with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Indianapolis 500 and INDYCAR and it has been our distinct honor to be partners for so many years. We look forward to the rest of our events this season and wish them all the best in the future.”