Some changes are coming to racing on TV in the United States.
Most significantly, NASCAR has completed the first step in re-negotiating its multi-billion dollar, eight-year TV contracts with Fox, ESPN/ABC and Turner or TNT. Also, Formula 1 will move next year from Speed, which has televised F1 in America for the past seventeen years, to NBC and NBC Sports.
NASCAR’s 36 Sprint Cup races have been shared since 2007 by Fox, ESPN/ABC and TNT with Fox televising the first third of the season, TNT covering half a dozen mid-season races and ESPN/ABC taking over for the year’s final seventeen races. The 2007 package ran for eight years through 2014 and is worth $4.3 billion to NASCAR. This week NASCAR announced it had completed a new agreement with Fox for its portion of the calendar. Negotiations with ESPN/ABC and TNT will take place next summer.
Fox has agreed to pay NASCAR $2.4 billion for its new contract which runs from 2015-2022. This represents an increase of $75 million per year and includes the rights to each year’s first thirteen Sprint Cup races and the entire Camping World Truck series as well as live streaming or ‘TV everywhere’ rights. Fox owns SpeedTV and the network will be rebranded later this year as Fox Sports so the massive, wall-to-wall news and opinion coverage of NASCAR will continue on the former Speed channel under its new Fox branding.
NASCAR’s existing eight-year contract with Fox, ESPN/ABC and TNT brought in a collective rights fee of $4.3 billion. By increasing the income for the Fox portion of its broadcast schedule NASCAR has gained the necessary leverage to raise the ante in next summer’s negotiations with ESPN/ABC so that it could bring in as much as $5 billion in TV rights fees for 2015-’22.
Meanwhile, Bernie Ecclestone has turned his back on Fox and Speed in favour of moving F1 in America to NBC and NBC Sports. Starting next year NBC will televise the Canadian GP plus the year’s final three F1 races with the rest of the Grands Prix on NBC Sports. The latter is available only by subscription and currently televises most IndyCar races. It’s said IndyCar will be twinned with many of next year’s F1 races with most IndyCar races serving as a lead-in to most F1 races. The hope is that this will prove to be a boost to both series’ tiny US markets.
The rights fees for Ecclestone’s new deal with NBC have not been revealed but the figure is sure to be a small fraction of NASCAR’s large bag of gold. Nor will F1 or IndyCar enjoy much more than basic coverage of qualifying and the races while NASCAR will continue to benefit from massive, daily coverage on the rebranded Fox Sports network as well as on ESPN.
Non-NASCAR fans complain bitterly about NASCAR’s endless coverage on Speed but they will have to accept that this state of affairs is not going to change on Fox Sports. They will also have to accept that F1, IndyCar and sports car racing will continue with not much more than token TV coverage and a minimal presence in America’s overall sports culture.
For those of us who are fans of open-wheel and sports car racing it’s a sad situation but IndyCar and American sports car racing have crippled themselves over the past decade and a half with internecine strife and amateur management, laying themselves wide open to NASCAR’s organised push for domination of the US scene. But Ecclestone too has been blown away in America by NASCAR’s steady expansion of its TV footprint and rights fees. It’s one area where Bernie could learn a thing or two from NASCAR.
I know it’s nearly Halloween, but you could’ve warned us about the close-up of Bernie.
I simply don’t think ‘fans’ compute with BE only $.
I hope David Hobbs will still be part of the F1 coverage his insight and humor is much admired.
They should just call Speed the NASCAR channel and be done with it. Endless hours of round table discussions by verbose twits that are unintelligible. It’s cheap, one-camera TV. Do we really want endless hours of round-table F1 discussions? That’s all the NASCAR TV footprint really is.
If Bernie were smart or under 100 years old, he would sell F1 through the internet as a live streaming channel, and cut out the networks. 25 million in the US subscribe to NetFlix.
There isn’t, nor has there been, any problems with the quality of SPEED’s F1 coverage. Great commentators (some of the best in the biz) and live coverage of practice, qualifying, and most races (some tape-delayed on FOX) is what we F1 fans in the US have enjoyed. I’d hope that NBC is smart enough to bring over the same F1 group from SPEED. I do admit, however, to not being interested in almost anything else on SPEED.
I’m gonna miss Hobbs and Matchett. David Hobbs, a great driver and a very humorous commentator. The rest of the Speed crew, well good luck…
…and why do I feel we’re going to get short-changed in F1 coverage, such as no more practice or qualifying coverage…. I guess it’ll be wait and see, but I don’t have a lot of faith in NBC – their hockey coverage over here is just terrible with heavily biased reporting.
I fervently hope that all of the current commentators, Hobbs, Matchett, and Varsha on Speed will find a new home at NBC. I can’t imagine F1 without their incisive analysis, humour, and knowledge of F1 lore.
Dave, while I watch qualifying, I can’t think of any good reason why modern F1 qualifying should be watched at all. It could be summed up in a 60 second update.
As for practice, if this is exciting to people, just go out and stare at a freeway for an hour.
” stare at a freeway for an hour.” Not true- there is passing on the freeway. I’m cautiously optimistic about NBC. Fox has really been shortchanging F1 since they took over Speed. I for one hope they can somehow poach the Speed F1 crew, especially Hobbs and Machette.
NASCAR has long ago degenerated into demonstration of speed similar to professional wrestling’s longtime illegitimacy. Tony Stewart said as much before his agent hushed any further honest opinion. The Speed Channel’s coverage of other, better racing series has been pathetic. Most of the racing coverage is devoted to endless repeats of NASCAR practice/qualifying/races with almost no other racing series covered. Instead of road racing or rallying, or even top class drag racing, rupert murdoch’s money-boys offer a half dozen of the worst reality programs imaginable. I look forward to downgrading my satellite television channel package to be rid of Speed now that Formula One will be elsewhere.
No need to insult NASCAR, Carl, just because you prefer the fake technology and opera buffa of F1.
Like other “colonial’s”, I think SpeedTV have done a meritous job covering F1. Like, the F1 Debrief re-cap show, particularly, better than some of the races.
Bob Varsha, David Hobbs and Steve Matchett a very well rounded team. Pray NBC finds a spot for them.
In Canada, we also get the UK F1 coverage package, always have, spoiled for choice and happy about it.
Speed’s NASCAR emphasis makes economic sense,they too fight for sponsor dollars. We don’t call it “The NASCAR Network ” for nought, it’s obsessed in that direction.
Useful diversion to World of Outlaws races, and that’s quite fun.
Aussie V8′s, Monterey Historics, Grand AM and ALMS are covered too, but the rest of the world, not much.
Tried rallying, but it’s a shadow now, Loeb’s era punched it out. GP2 at odd hours, none too compelling.
DTM the worst commentary,I’ve ever heard in any series, in all my life, drying paint more animated.
NBC will be glossier, bigger star power, more elemental in discussion, festooned with graphics and sponsored vignettes about things WE all know. Audience building needs education component, and it’ll be kindergarten.
Speed has a void to fill, I hope upon hope for international coverage with diversification, but really doubt it.
SpeedTV (“Spud”) is much worse than the massive NASCAR block on their schedule. Their “reality” TV shows were what caused me to cease paying extra for the channel a few years ago. I don’t pay extra to see shows like “Living the Low Life” (real name) pre-empt or be scheduled instead of such quality programming such as Victory by Design.
I could stomach the massive NASCAR block of programming. As others have noted, it made economic sense. The “Low Life” shows did not make any sense at all. I hope Spud fails.
Why do I get this funny feeling that F1 coverage is going to be improved to the point where it’s going to be worse? Wait and see, I guess…
Gordon, you have no idea of the angst held in every American with a passion for road racing. First our geography is wrong. Except for some fine times in the Rockies and the Appalachians, there are just too many straights. Then, we were so rich that we built stadiums for cars and never just watched them when they passed through the corners. (Savannah and Santa Monica, we cherished you.)
Oh, Gordon, you only skim the surface. The American sporting mentality, for the most part, is not finely nuanced. I am not saying that you fellows across the Pond did not have your blood thirsty moments but you clothed them in chivalry and the privilege of giving your life for a passion. We just moved on from lynching to car racing, culminating in the darkest moment of the 21st century with Don Wheldon’s crash. At least ’55 Le Mans was not engineered with blood lust in mind.
We’ll throw our footballers in a concussive stupor, run our cars so the schlepp in the back can ruin the race for the talent in the front, and otherwise hope for a contact sport involving automatic weapons. You will try to be slightly more civilized than us, even if the avaricious quest of Bernie E. blocks your sun.
Please extend our nation your condolences.
It’s not true that NBC Sports is subscription-only – at least not everywhere: it’s the former OLN and Versus, and is available as part of my cable package.
It does sound like F1 is at least trying to position itself differently in the US, which maybe bodes well. Heck, maybe in a decade or so, we’ll even have the first US-born F1 driver since Peter Revson.
Indycar is ho-hum spec racing. I’m more interested in sports car racing lately, having followed the ALMS GT battles closely this year. Nothing Bernie does will induce me to watch more Indycar, unless they’re racing at Road America.
As long as I can get the races, I’ll be happy – in the initial years, and even decades, that I followed F1, the vast majority of the races weren’t televised in the USA at all. Speed did a decent job with F1, but I don’t anticipate things getting truly worse – as long as they don’t dumb things down to enhance viewership like they do with big races like the Indy 500, eschewing good coverage of what’s going on on the track in favor of lots of “human interest” and explanitory crap – “And here’s Sam Posey explaining why F1 cars don’t have airbags.”
Speed Channel has really gone down the toilet lately. About the only thing you can find is those stupid Pass Time, Pinks and Dumbest Stuff on Wheels. What a bunch of maroons are running that channel. Probably Varsha has something to do with it. Poor guy doesn’t even know what a ground hog looks like!
Like the rest of you, I hope Steve Matchett and David Hobbscap are picked up by NBC. What would be really cool would be if they could also get Derek Bell to come on board!I’m tired of Varsha’s arrogant blabbering.
I am also concerned that we will no longer get the excellent Le Mans coverage here – last year they broadcast live almost 22 hours of it!
Jimmy Lisle writes: “Like the rest of you, I hope Steve Matchett and David Hobbscap are picked up by NBC. What would be really cool would be if they could also get Derek Bell to come on board!I’m tired of Varsha’s arrogant blabbering.”
Well, Jimmy, apparently one expatriate living in America wants to have an all English trio broadcasting Formula One. In America. On an American channel. It’s the English Channel you are missing.
Bob Varsha is excellent, as are David Hobbs and Steve Matchett. My hope is that all three continue doing Formula One on NBC.
The majority of NASCAR drivers could not even graduate from an SCCA Driver’s School let alone complete a regional race
without being black flagged. They drive like a bunch of guber inbreds.