IndyCar stars ecstatic about FOX partnership

EDDIE KALEGI - STAFF WRITER

Photo taken at NTT INDYCAR SERIES content day, January 14th, 2025

Following arguably his best season as an NTT IndyCar Series driver, emerging superstar Pato O’Ward took the stage to commence the series’ annual ‘Content Days,’ and within minutes, made a statement that would be echoed across the grid throughout the week.

“I want to publicly state that I think what FOX and IndyCar are doing is frickin’ phenomenal.”

Last summer, the United States’ predominant open wheel racing series inked a media rights’ agreement with FOX Sports, moving all the NTT IndyCar Series and IndyNXT broadcasts to their possession beginning in 2025. The move had already drawn more attention than past media rights exchanges given the terms of the deal, which guaranteed that the entire IndyCar calendar would be broadcasted live on the FOX network, rather than a smaller channel like FOX Sports 1, something neither NASCAR nor Formula One have been able to achieve in their recent American broadcast agreements.

But it became abundantly clear that FOX is taking this new package seriously when a jaw-dropping commercial, spotlighting two-time reigning Indianapolis 500 champion Josef Newgarden, dropped on social media and aired during opening weekend of the National Football League playoffs.

The advertisement, which featured seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady, had a tangible change of pace from IndyCar’s marketing with its previous partner, NBC Sports, which had exclusive rights since 2018 and held rights for more than a decade.

“It’s so well done. It’s fun. It’s edgy,” O’Ward said. “It’s flirting with that line where people do get engaged, and you’re like ‘hey, this is different.’”

O’Ward and defending series champion Alex Palou both confirmed that they have similar commercials dropping before the season begins, with O’Ward comparing the filming of his advertisement to “a movie shoot.”

Scott Dixon, the elder statesman of the NTT IndyCar Series who enters his 25th full-time season this spring, hadn’t seen Newgarden’s commercial as of his media availability, but voiced similar praise for FOX’s apparent enthusiasm for the network’s looming IndyCar coverage.

“I think that’s kind of what you always asked, even from partners in the past,” Dixon said. “Sometimes it would kind of click and sometimes it didn’t, but it seems like out of the gate [FOX] is really excited, they’re wanting to make this bigger and better, which is what you really want from partners.”

While there is clearly a retooled marketing strategy, FOX has also maintained some of the strengths of IndyCar's NBC coverage, retaining former competitors James Hinchcliffe and Townsend Bell as broadcast analysts. Will Buxton, a longtime presenter for Formula One coverage, moves to the states to serve as the play-by-play announcer.

Finally, the usage of Tom Brady in the aforementioned Newgarden commercial appears to be just one of several tie-ins that FOX plans to incorporate between IndyCar and its other sports properties.

“They’ve been promoting it through the NFL, through college with their Big Noon Kickoff, we saw Graham Rahal on Big Noon Kickoff” Tony Donohue, host of the Tony D Podcast, said on last Friday’s episode of Motorsports Today. Donohue has heard that there will even be an IndyCar presence on the network’s coverage of the biggest sporting event in the country next month, the Super Bowl in New Orleans.

The new era of IndyCar on FOX Sports will begin with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on Sunday March 2nd at 12:00 p.m.