Apart from NASCAR itself, if there is one body that has been facing the constant backlash of fans, it is FOX Sports.
The list of complaints from fans is long and is frequently updated with new entries every few weeks. Some of the biggest ones among these were the scheduling conflicts between NASCAR and IndyCar, live broadcasting errors, and audio-video sync glitches.
Although fans and many prominent figures from the NASCAR community openly criticized FOX, it often defended the actions with unsatisfactory explanations.
Ahead of the Indy 500, Drew Panaro, the vice president of FOX, addressed the NASCAR backlash in recent times and also outlined the broadcaster’s goal for the race at Indianapolis.
Fox Sports VP Drew Panaro Confessed To Being Aware of the Backlash on Social Media
One of the biggest pet peeves of a racing fan is to spectate a random advertisement in the midst of a high-action racing event. However, as much as many may dislike it, the ads are an essential source of revenue for the sports business.
Besides, brands often write insanely big cheques to have their ads displayed to millions of viewers, and live sports are an ideal bridge for this.
The perfect example of this is the upcoming Indy 500. As FOX Sports became the sole broadcaster of the biggest IndyCar race of the year, it also came up with some solutions for the advertising part.
Last year, FOX Sports set an ad inventory and a fixed revenue target for the Indy 500 that it was aiming to achieve. However, the broadcaster ran out of the initial inventory more than six months before the event, and even for the revenue, it crossed the expected number by a considerable margin.
While speaking to Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal, Panaro also credited the CEO of the network, Eric Shanks, who is a huge fan of IndyCar himself and helped quite a bit in attaining the numbers.
As Panaro explained more about the nature of the deal between brands and the network, he eventually addressed the bashing FOX has been receiving in recent times. Although he did not touch on all the issues, he spoke about the full-screen ads during the races.
As a solution, FOX Sports has decided to come up with a double-box screen for running ads during the live broadcast. Panaro said, “We’re actually going double-box this season as much as we can.”
In its debut Indy 500 broadcast, FOX Sports has chosen to go with the full-screen broadcast with a partial double-box screen approach. However, in case of caution, the broadcaster will run full-screen ads.
Following this, Panaro also mentioned the approach he tried taking with NASCAR broadcasts last year and mentioned the social media brawl among fans. He also mentioned FOX Sports’ new philosophy for live racing broadcasts, saying:
“I initiated that last year [double-box screen]. I’m not ignoring social media. I’m on there as much as anybody, so I see what fans say. We wanted to clean it up. Our goal is to not miss a green-flag lap aside from local breaks that we can’t do anything about.”
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