It Will Take a Peacock to Watch NTT IndyCar Series Honda Indy Toronto Race

• Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto—the 10th race of the season—will be televised live only on NBC’s Peacock Premium streaming service

• The basic Peacock streaming service is free, but to watch Sunday’s race you’ll have to pay $4.99 per month for Peacock Premium.

• Several cable services offer Peacock Premium as a freebie in cable packages.

• Check your local listings (or at least check your our cable service early so you're not disappointed), as they say.

If you’re an IndyCar fan, live in the U.S., and want to watch Sunday’s NTT IndyCar Series Honda Indy Toronto, you may have to open your wallet.

This weekend, it's all about Peacock. Make that Peacock Premium.

While 16 races on this year’s 17-race IndyCar schedule are televised either on the NBC network (14 races, an all-time IndyCar high) or the USA cable network (2 races), Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto—the 10th race of the season—will be televised live only on NBC’s Peacock Premium streaming service.

The basic Peacock streaming service is free, but to watch Sunday’s race you’ll have to pay $4.99 per month for Peacock Premium (you can always cancel after the first month, if you wish).

Peacock Premium regularly carries all practices, qualifying and races (in addition to races also being aired on NBC or USA) plus replays, but Sunday’s race marks the first time ever that an IndyCar race will be carried solely on Peacock Premium and not on NBC or USA.

Sunday marks the first IndyCar race in Toronto since 2019, as both the 2020 and 2021 editions of the very popular event were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following Toronto, six of the season’s final seven races will be aired on NBC, including the next four events, part of a stretch of five races in 22 days (July 17 in Toronto, July 23-24 at Iowa, July 30 at Indianapolis and August 7 at Nashville).

Purchasing Peacock Premium has the added benefit of just three minutes of commercials from green flag to checkered flag, NBC told Autoweek.

“As part of our new agreement with IndyCar—and similar to what is happening across the entire media industry—we are following viewership trends and experimenting with presenting content on new platforms,” an NBC spokesperson told Autoweek. “This week’s IndyCar race stream, exclusively on Peacock (Premium), allows us to test new features aimed at enhancing the viewing experience, including presenting this race with fewer than five minutes of commercial interruption.

“We are excited to present this first-class content on Peacock, which we are confident will bring new viewers to the service.”

Peacock Premium Plus

But wait, there's more.

There is also a commercial-free version available known as Peacock Premium Plus for an additional $5 per month above the $4.99 monthly subscription fee.

According to NBC, Peacock currently has more than 28 million monthly active accounts (free) and 13 million paid subscribers for Premium.

Riding the Wave

IndyCar has been riding a wave of upward momentum of increased viewership dating back to last season.

According to SportsMediaWatch.com, through the season’s first eight races (not including the July 3 race at Mid-Ohio, which drew just over 875,000 viewers on NBC), “The IndyCar Series is now averaging 1.72 million viewers across NBC and USA Network (including an additional streaming audience of 61,000 not tracked by Nielsen), up 5% from last year on NBC and NBCSN (1.63 millon) and the series’ highest average through its first eight races since 2017 (1.76 million).”

“Peacock is home to an entire world of sports and entertainment, providing millions of users access to quality and engaging content,” an IndyCar spokesperson told Autoweek. “The platform allows us to provide more live NTT IndyCar Series action to our fans than ever before, while also helping us engage with a wider audience already streaming additional live events and programming.

“Our race viewership on Peacock Premium has grown steadily this season as fans have become more familiar with the product. This weekend’s race provides an opportunity for even more users to test the experience, with the added benefit of limited commercial interruption.”

But if you really, really want to see the race for free, there’s still a way: Sportsnet in Canada will televise the event nationally north of the border. Oh, Canada!

Follow Autoweek contributor Jerry Bonkowski on Twitter @JerryBonkowski