In May 1966 my high school buddy Jim McManus and I took an MBTA streetcar to Lower Washington Street in Boston’s Combat Zone to watch a live feed in grainy black & white of that year’s Indy 500 in a once glorious, golden age movie palace which customarily featured porn. In later years I attended the 1986 Phoenix CART Indy car race (followed the next weekend by the Long Beach Grand Prix), then our local CART/IRL races at New Hampshire International Speedway from 1992 until NASCAR overwhelmed the venue in 1998.
Today’s just concluded Bommarito Automotive Group 500 reminds me of how much I love this strictly American form of motorsport… and how much I’m going to miss NBC/Peacock’s admittedly flawed IndyCar coverage of the last several seasons. I honestly don’t see how Fox’s new, much ballyhooed OTA/cable broadcast package for 2025 leaves anything for long time fans like me to celebrate. Currently, and for the final few races of this extremely competitive season, my $8.76 per month for Peacock* buys me live coverage of all practice and qualifying sessions along with support races and the IndyCar feature race. Granted, the races themselves are inundated with commercials but practice and qualifying run commercial-free. As I first gleaned while attending the 1996 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, much (if not most) of the drama of a race weekend builds during the latter, something that remains true to this day. Plus, the commentary during the preliminary broadcasts is always more incisive and thorough than that of the dumbed down “general audiences” TV show on Sunday.
More importantly, however, the lack of a streaming option akin to the one NBC provides with Peacock means that someone like me who can’t always watch races live will no longer have the option of a legitimate time shift to watch the races in a convenient time and place. Of course, I could buy a DVR of some sort but as someone who cut the cable years ago I’d still need to purchase a digital antenna which might or might not be able to pull in the nearest Fox broadcast tower which is nearly seventy miles away from my home in Central Florida. All in, a step backwards technologically and convenience/cost-wise as Penske Entertainment latches onto a dying platform. To “grow the sport?” Among what cohort of potential viewers?
What am I missing?
*Which also includes all IMSA practice/qualifying/races and other NBC offerings, like my guilty pleasure Dateline.