FOX Sports making serious play for IndyCar TV rights

The FOX Broadcasting Company has emerged as a serious contender for the NTT IndyCar Series’ broadcast rights. NBC, the series’ current TV and streaming partner which has held its exclusive rights since 2019, is entering the final year of its broadcast arrangement with IndyCar.

Multiple sources have told RACER that FOX — the network and cable giant which holds major contracts with the NFL, MLB, FIFA’s World Cup, NCAA football and basketball, and NASCAR — is taking a hard look at IndyCar as a high-value property to add to its limited roster of motor racing offerings. RACER also understands Indiana-born FOX Sports CEO Eric Shanks attended at least one IndyCar race last year as a guest of the series and was visited by the series on a recent trip to Los Angeles.

Once known as the home for Formula 1, IMSA, Supercross, and the FIA World Endurance Championship — especially through its Fox Sports 1 and 2 cable outlets — FOX has placed the majority of its focus on NASCAR and shoulder programming, including a daily “NASCAR Race Hub” news show on FS1 and routine features about the country’s most popular form of racing on its channels. FOX also airs the NHRA.

“On FOX, I can confirm that they have been interested,” IndyCar/Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles told RACER. “They’ve been in discussions with us from when we first began the process to market our rights for 2025. They’re fans of IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500 race. They built a reputation for doing a great job in the way they tell stories and in the way they produce events. I think they’re eager to see what they could do in that regard with the 500 and with IndyCar.”

Like FOX, NBC and other network, cable, and streaming entities — believed to be six or seven in total — have registered a desire to earn a new deal with the series that debuted at the 1911 Indy 500.

“FOX continues to be in discussions with us and there’s a regular cadence of communication with them and others,” Miles added. “We’ll see where it goes.”

Although a move to FOX and its sports cable outlets would provide a fresh start for IndyCar, leaving NBC would involve departing the most-watched network in 2023, according to Variety, for the network which rated fourth after CBS and ABC. The potential upsides, however, are notable.

Among the positives for IndyCar would be its placement atop FOX’s motor racing priorities once the network does its annual midseason transfer of its NASCAR coverage to NBC. Under NASCAR’s new and expanded broadcast package that starts in 2025, FOX and NBC will see their split of the entire Cup Series calendar reduced as NASCAR takes 10 races away from the networks and sends them to a new blend of Amazon Prime and Warner Bros. Discovery/TNT.

As a result, FOX’s handover of NASCAR to NBC, which happens this year on June 9, will take place earlier with Amazon Prime — at some point in May of 2025 — and comes with FOX’s anticipated loss of the marquee Coca-Cola 600 race at Charlotte, which runs hours after the Indy 500.