IndyCar Needs More Dedicated TV Partners

Photo Credit: Christopher Nagy


The 200-plus mile per hour open wheel race cars have been zooming in front of an improved business model. In the past two years, increased field participation, a richer quality lineup of drivers and the IndyCar series title sponsor with high-end apparel company IZOD has shown the the potential of some newfound glory for the American auto racing tour. Acquiring new allies as the sport rebuilds, one aspect which is pivotal to the immediate growth of the IZOD IndyCar series is television broadcast partners committed to the series. In this situation, it's clear the Indy Racing League may not be getting their value from some of the current television package.

Allow me to first exclude the team that puts the IndyCar races together on the American cable channel Versus. While I'm in Canada and forced to settle with what our cable sports channel wants to show, I have been impressed by the play-by-play and the focus directed towards the IZOD IndyCar Series itself. Another network, which I will name later, tends to run IndyCar races in the foreground but covers it as a sideshow to celebrity guests and other shows on the TV station. I wish Versus would be broadcasted directly to Canada since I'll also have a few issues to share with the Canadian sports channel. We know that distribution is an issue with Versus in the United States for Versus as 19.6 million American DirecTV customers missed the Sao Paulo IndyCar opener due to fee disputes. However, the broadcasts are refreshing realizing the IZOD IndyCar Series as a premier racing series.

Witnessing Versus as providing an excellent IndyCar telecast, ABC races for IndyCar stand out as horrendous. I remembered when ABC (or ESPN on ABC) covered the CART/Champ Car series in the early 2000s they pioneered this effort to interview winners while they were on their cool-down lap. ABC were running the races so tight on time they couldn't even broadcast a proper victory lane ceremony.

In the last race broadcast of the Camping World at the Glen, the start caught the ABC team by surprise as they were focused on a pre-race pit report as the green flag dropped. Essentially missing the start of the race, this is certainly a mistake no NASCAR race coverage would dare to make happen.

Backing up claims that the ABC broadcast is working like an advertisement to their other shows, announcers in the race mentioned no fewer than three times of Danica Patrick's NASCAR Nationwide Nationwide Series race at New Hampshire. While it is not unusual to point out other efforts of IndyCar drivers, the talk about Patrick reeked of promoting Patrick in NASCAR rather than her current efforts in the IZOD IndyCar Series. Of course, since the ABC parent company spent considerable monies securing the NASCAR Nationwide Series it seems operative that they plug the stock car racing series.

As bad as ABC can be, imagine worse. In Canada, TSN (The Sports Network) handles the entire coverage scheme of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series doing few favours for the open wheel division. Getting spotty coverage throughout the year, many of the broadcasts were diverted to TSN's digital-only channel TSN2. While live auto racing coverage has become the norm, the June 20th race at Iowa Speedway witnessed the Canadian-based network drag open wheel racing into a wrong direction. Race fans were figurately punted into the wall as the Iowa Corn 250 aired on the digital channel around midnight on early Monday morning. Insulting the racing fateful fans to the IZOD IndyCar, many fans who needed to get up early for work missed Tony Kanaan take victory in one of the most exciting races of the year. Decreasing the effective reach for the series, one full-time Canadian driver Alex Tagliani (two if you include Ryan-Hunter Reay who's mother was Canadian) gets shouldered onto another network as they provide less patriotic sports on the primary channel. Unfortunately, I believe that TSN only picks up sports like the IZOD IndyCar Series in order to insure that a rival network can't. Since several IndyCar races run near the same time as a NASCAR Sprint Cup race, they don't want auto racing competition on the lower-tier cable channels.

In the most recent Watkins Glen race, ABC made one right move by using side-by-side coverage through portions of the race. Meaning that advertisements will be shown on one side of the screen while viewers can still watch the IZOD IndyCar Series race on the other, TSN refused to provide the same experience to Canadian customers. Was the sports channel that desperate to gather every dime of ad revenue?

I criticize only because I want networks to improve on their faults and provide the IZOD IndyCar Series with the respect it has richly earned. For the remaining races of 2010, I'll be watching.

More NASCAR on ESPN for 2010: 90% of Chase Races to be Aired on Cable Network

Photo Credit: Ford Media


In a press release made available on Wednesday, America's largest cable sports provider ESPN announced that their network will broadcast 9 of the 10 races in the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup's Chase for the Cup Championship. With the 10-race Chase for the Cup airing entirely on ABC through the past 3 seasons, the over-the-air channel will only show the October 16th night race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Last year’s performance showed us that ESPN provides the best home for NASCAR,” ESPN's executive vice president of content John Skipper said regarding the increased Sprint Cup coverage on the sports channel. Only 3 NASCAR Sprint Cup races will be televised on the ABC channels for 2010.

Back in 2000, NASCAR took the direct role in negotiating the season long coverage of the three major series (Sprint Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Truck Series) in an effort to not only net a bigger money deal but to gain broadcasting partners committed to expanding the exposure of professional stock car racing. In the inaugural season of the initial NASCAR TV deal involving FOX and NBC stations in 2001, 9 of regular 36 races were shown on cable channels while the rest aired on over-the-air networks. With only one event per week in their major division, this exposure on wide network television was important as NASCAR was continuing to push growth of the sport's brand. After the 2006 season, NBC decided not to renew their contract with NASCAR (though cable relative TNT did resign) allowing an ABC/ESPN deal to be formulated. Though ABC and ESPN had been pivotal in the past with fostering the once more humbler NASCAR series to a national audience, the loyalty of the networks to NASCAR since their return is not equal to Fox or even TNT.

In fact, it seems ABC's commitment for sports coverage appears to be dwindling. Moving ABC's long-established Monday Night Football to ESPN in 2006, this has been the most transparent to the media company's choice to empathize sports on their specialty channel. For NASCAR, the likeliest reason for this move from over the air to cable television is money more than viewership. ESPN benefits from a much higher pay per carriage fee from cable and satellite companies in the US which makes it more profitable to air increasingly more expensive sporting events when TV ad revenue takes a dive.

Because of the 9 NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase races shifting to ESPN, there will be more live races airing on cable channel than on major networks for the first time since NASCAR began brokering the TV packages. “This is exciting news for NASCAR and our fans,” NASCAR's Media Group President Paul Brooks assures the observers of the stock car racing series. However, is it quite a disenchanting event when 20 races on cable for 2010 appears to be regressing NASCAR. A stumble in at race attendance and slightly lower TV ratings in later years of the Sprint Cup have led the sanctioning body to rethink their sport. Attempting double-file restarts through more than half a season in 2009, there is also considerations being made to the race cars planned to compete at the Daytona 500 using everything from removing out-of-bounds lines to enlarging restrictor plates to speed up the cars.

NASCAR says no the "Crabby Cars"

When NASCAR set out to create the plans for the new generation race car best known as the COT, it was the intended to limit the radical thoughts teams had long exercised in pursuing speed. After less than a half season of notes, NASCAR teams are now working outside of the boxy constraints of the new generation car.

After watching qualifying for the Spint All-Star race at Lowe's Motor Speedway, myself and I'm certain other TV viewers took note of the vehicles traveling down pit road. One after one, each race car had been side driving down the straights, giving the appearance deemed crab walking. When I first caught it, I thought it was the result of the track bar breaking. However, as qualifying progressed, it became evident that some crew chiefs and Sprint Cup team engineers allowed their skilled imaginations to get the better of them. While almost every car in All-Star qualifying exhibited this side drive including Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch, one of the more extreme examples to this setup appeared evident with Sam Hornish's #77 Mobil Dodge in the Showdown qualifying race.

Sprint cup teams will literally maintain the straight and narrow this weekend at the Coca-Cola 600. According to espn.com , NASCAR Sprint Cup teams have received a bulletin from NASCAR indicating new rules restricting car setups adding rightward toe to the rear end drive assembly which involved a drive plate and axle shaft. Though this side drive made the stock cars appear like wounded animals down the straightaways, the adjustment was sought to improve cornering speeds and increase downforce on the rear wing.