IndyCar News: Fox has big plans for the Indy 500 broadcast
In a Press Conference ahead of the IndyCar season opener in St. Petersburg, Florida, FOX Sports CEO Eric Shanks said that Fox is going to ‘blow the doors off” the Indy 500 TV Broadcast.
“I think our goal with particularly how we have dug into INDYCAR and this partnership is figuring out how to make the hard-core fans more passionate, but also make the product approachable to new fans?
“As you guys can imagine, open-wheel racing is cool, but you really kind of got to work to attach yourself to it. So we’re doing simple things, like every 15 minutes telling you what the rules are, right, because it’s kind of complicated.
“We are deploying new technology to take you places that you haven’t been before, but then also simple things like who is in what car? We put transponders in the car along with INDYCAR that for the first time you can actually — like during practice on a wide shot you see who is who. These cars all kind of look the same, and they don’t have big numbers.
“Then it really all comes down to the drivers. You take Alex, Josef, Pato, Marcus, Rossi. They have not said no to us yet, right, of doing anything. When these guys are all in and they think that they’re with somebody that truly has their brand at heart, highlighting their personalities along with new technology, making it approachable, and we’re going to learn as we go. Yesterday’s broadcast was different than today’s.
“Then to answer your question about the 500 itself, we clearly know that it’s the crowned jewel of all of motorsports, but we also wanted to make sure that our focus is not just on Indy. So you see what we’re doing here.
“You’re going to see what we’re doing at Thermal, Long Beach, as it goes out. But we are going to blow the doors off of Indy. We’re going to bring everything that Fox has to bear.
“We have personalities that we probably haven’t announced yet, but there will be an enormous amount of Fox personalities and non-Fox personalities doing everything that you could imagine there.
“We’re going to be cross-promoting with our other sports, and I think we have a two and a half hour pre-race show that day. You can imagine bringing Tom Rinaldi’s storytelling to bear. Telling stories that hopefully you either haven’t heard before or we’re going to tell them in a way you haven’t heard before. So keeping in mind that we want to elevate the whole series, we’ve got a big team already working on Indy.
“And we’re getting new swag. This is the new swag for INDYCAR on Fox. “Fastest racing on earth,” (Editor’s Note: This is a lie. NHRA cars are much faster than IndyCars) and then like a concert tour, we’ve got all of the stops on the back with the “Kick Start My Heart” Tour. That’s our theme for the year. I think Vince Neil is actually going to be here tomorrow, which is going to be awesome.
“Then, yeah, if anybody wants to stop by the Trackside Lodge at Indy, we’ll have new swag for you there too. It’s not real until you have T-shirts, right?
“The other thing with the 500 that I’m working on really hard with these guys is I really want to turn the Indy 500 into more of a Kentucky Derby day from a wagering standpoint.
“It’s hard to understand how to wager on motorsports. You just kind of don’t get it, but on Kentucky Derby day even if you don’t know anything about horse racing, you put down an exacta or a trifecta, you got win, place, show. How can we figure out how to get that type of broad attention around an event that honestly kind of feels a lot like horse racing that day? That kind of stuff we’re working on as well and hopefully have an announcement in the near future.”