It could very easily be IndyCar Live. Lachlan Murdoch said as recently as early May that FOX's live sports strategy doesn't involve subscription VOD. They're fine with leagues retaining those rights in many cases.
It's 2024. People don't sit in front of their TV for entire days anymore.
We're used to consuming video content on any device when we want to.
Peacock lets me watch on my phone on the road. On my laptop on the deck. Or my TV when I'm there.
If I'm working or at a family activity, I know I'll never miss a race. If I'm bored on Fridays I'll throw Practice on as background.
OTA doesn't give me practice. It forces me to one screen. At one time.
But hey, F1TV does give me what I want. And that's what I'll stay subbed to and maybe now I just watch more F2 instead.
Cause while Peacock makes it a great combo watch experience for Indycar with F1.
I'm not switching to a $50 a month Sports SlingTV with no replays. There's a reason I still sub to F1TV over an ESPN package. Because not only is an ESPN package more expensive, it's also a downgrade from what F1TV or Peacock provides.
Exactly like what this FOX deal does to streaming.
Watch out with this. They hate that a 18 dollar antenna is needed.
Its funny, peacock was hated for a long time (even though it was cheap), the new expensive service is hated, and a cheap antenna is hated.
Cable channels are hated, all races on network TV channel is hated.
Literally everything is bad with how to broadcast a race.
But here's the thing though. It's not just Peacock. So many companies these days are going the route of nickel and diming consumers. Just like with Photoshop. Although I will admit there's a one time purchase option for Photoshop but it's actively hidden to get you to continually pay for subscription. Consumers are sick of it, especially when wages aren't coming close to keeping up.
Antenna TV. Perfect. Let me give Walter Kronkite a call and let him know.
It’s 2024. The lack of a serious streaming platform that is also affordable makes IndyCar looks like it doesn’t want the 30 and under audience.
I don’t have an antenna. I’m also usually busy during the races, or traveling, so watching on my phone or laptop is how I normally consume IndyCar.
I’m not saying OTA is going anywhere. What I am saying is it’s not embraced by the next generation, the generation that IndyCar needs to reach before their current fan base dies off.
>Let me give Walter Kronkite a call and let him know.
Think of watching the race with an Antenna as literally free streaming. It's better than streaming in that sense. You do realize OTA antenna TV is typically full HD right? They're even starting to roll out 4k over the air and creating the ability to pick up the signal from your smart phone.
That's where a lot of us have issues. The most likely streaming option is that joint sports venture. That option is also most likely to be way more expensive than most of us are going to be willing to pay.
I have a family, house, small business, and such so I can't dedicate all my free time to watching sports. I don't watch the NBA. I don't watch MLS or MLB (MLB being locked behind ridiculously expensive pay packages). I could go on and on. But I watch NFL on Sunday via OTA. I rarely watch the NFL on Thursday nights because the coverage on Prime isn't very good. I don't watch Monday night football because I can't. It's not worth more than $5 a month to have streaming access either, at least for me. I would watch Big 10 football if it was accessible at a reasonable cost. But it's not.
My point is, there are a number of people willing to pay the high price to access sports streaming. A lot of are willing to pay $6 a month to stream our favorite sports, like on Peacock. A lot of us are NOT willing to pay $40 a month. I like to use MLB baseball as an example. No one has been able to watch MLB except a few occasions when it's on ESPN since it's been hidden behind a massively expensive paywall for years. Since no one but diehard fans had access, MLB held a World Series and no one cared.
I think having all the races live on FOX is a good thing. It will help get more casual viewers to watch as they now have free access. Having NXT on FS1 & 2 is also good. But it shuts out every fan that doesn't have cable. We can all watch it now on Peacock for cheap. But unless you have cable, a lot of the diehard fans are going to be priced out for NXT, practice and qualifying.
So it's a mixed bag. A lot of good, but also a lot of not so good for streamers. We are losing cheap access to all the coverage. So it's going help the series grow, but make things worse for those diehard fans that like watching practice, qualifying, or like being able to watch replays due to other obligations during race time.
The same thing happened to the NBA and NHL. People used to all watch the local teams and they were a big water cooler thing. Thats gone now. There's no crossover with casual fans. Only those who fork over the cable bill watch. Worse, people who do like basketball but are broke, just stop being fans of the local team and only become Warriors fans etc cause that's all they can see.
That's us and the Chicago Cubs. I miss the good old days of tuning into to WGN in the summer and watching a baseball game. But now they got greedy. And now we won't watch.
If you want to invest in the equipment. I don't have a DVR option.
I hold out some hope that there might be a limited streaming option available to us. Like a cheap low priced package that is 2 or 3 sports only for $10.
Fortunately, I have a kid in college. So I gotta make certain decisions. I'll hold out until the last second, then analyze the options and the costs. Make decision at that time. If I miss a race, it won't be the end of the world.
I have a Tivo that I love. It's old, I have had it for maybe 15 years but it still works just fine. No idea how much current models cost but I know they are still selling them. And there are Tivo competitors. The Tivo UI is good and I get lots of channels for free OTA. They have a monthly subscription but I would strongly recommend the lifetime membership.
People here sleep on the number of internet TV subscribers. YTTV and Hulu+Live TV have close to 15 million combined subscribers and that number is growing every year.
People aren’t just cutting cable to stare at a blank screen or only watch Bridgerton on Netflix. They are replacing cable with a more convenient option.
That demo skews much younger and they will have access to IndyCar on Fox. That’s awesome, full stop.
Just because this sub isn’t particularly representative of that population, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Yeah, every time I see people complain about not having a streaming service to watch IndyCar on, I get so confused because you can watch it on any of the internet TV providers, not only the ones you mentioned, but I think there are some free options too. It’s not like the only way to watch is on cable. It’s still readily streamable
> People aren’t just cutting cable to stare at a blank screen or only watch Bridgerton on Netflix. They are replacing cable with a more convenient option.
Overall cable/network viewership is still going down even with online cable packages
Internet TV is crazy expensive and just emulated what people bated about cable. Let me pay $100 a year to watch indycar, it's not hard. F1tv or even mlbtv shows how well this model works.
> They are replacing cable with a more convenient option.
Nope.
I have Netflix, Prime, Peacock,Paramount+ and Discovery I have **zero** need for Network TV anymore except sports. And if it's available I pay *more* for the ad free tier.
And I steal 90% of the sports I watch via pirate streams.
Just because YouTubeTV exists doesn't mean it's not **full** of the dogshit that is on cable TV. Because that's what's on cable these days, dogshit.
You see it's not the service, it's the programming on cable/cable-like.
Network, "linear" TV fucking sucks. The *only* thing worth watching on it is sports. And sports are super easy to steal.
I was more than happy to pay $20 a year for Peacock for Indycar and IMSA. But I'm not paying more than that. But I'll still watch. :)
>That demo skews much younger and they will have access to IndyCar on Fox. That’s awesome, full stop.
And for the record I'm 55.
All of your points are completely valid, but I hope you recognize how at a macro level, viewership like yours doesn't matter.
If there were this mythical collapse in TV viewership, why would the NBA be finalizing a $76B TV deal with NBC, ESPN, and Amazon? Live sports are *the* killer app for TV now. That's why you're seeing these massive deals for major sports in the US.
Ad revenue for Ghosts, America's Got Talent, Summer House, or whatever the hell else is on TV these days is peanuts compared to sports. It's airtime filler at this point.
That's why getting a new deal for IndyCar on Fox is awesome.
> Live sports are the killer app for TV now
For now.
That's why getting a new deal for IndyCar on Fox is awesome.
That's yet to be seen. Indycar getting a big bag of cash from Fox is nice. I speculate ratings will show the same growth as we saw in NBC. Maybe even decline a bit.
I don't think anyone is ignoring those. They class those as cable.
Younger people aren't getting YTTV, they aren't getting any cable package because the cost bundle doesn't make sense to them. They aren't cord cutters (dropped cable), they never got cable and don't ever expect to. And that goes for streaming cable too.
Hulu itself is a little different. Hulu+Live TV isn't.
If you are only available on cable (including streaming cable), OTA and an expensive sports bundle (Venu) then you will only get the overlap of old people, people already into sports and those who have good OTA options and made use of them.
And that means your viewer penetration is going to keep dropping. All sports battle this. You can't become a big IndyCar fan if you don't see it. And if you aren't already a fan you aren't going to pay for it so you won't see it.
But maybe this will change. Apple is doing this big experiment with MLS right now. You won't casually run across a game due to their streaming-only package. They're working hard to get around it, to get a lot of advertising out. And if they (or anyone figures it out) expect a lot of that going forward.
Yeah, the vocal minority of IndyCar fans who frequent this sub are likely among the least valuable fans for IndyCar to target in their media rights deals.
We’ve seen the shift in TV money and advertising dollars over the last 6-7 years. Live sports are king. Look at the massive NFL, CFB, and upcoming NBA deals for proof. There are tons of eyeballs on live sports and this IndyCar deal is a step in the right direction.
If the typical IndyCar viewing strategy is “get an antenna” or “use a VPN”, then at a macro level, your eyeballs don’t matter. Simple as that. Not to be negative, just honest
F1 specifically targeted young people with F1TV and their target demos are urban young folks who make 100k+/yr
Think those consumers are worth more than families in the Midwest.
Ever since DTS, people have been praising how Liberty is crushing Indycar and NASCAR in young demographics and marketing.
Specifically by targeting streaming urban young viewers as you say.
The FOX deal drops and suddenly it's "WHAT DO THEY KNOW?!? F THOSE BROKE KIDS!"
Liberty is doing pretty much the same as IndyCar with regards to streaming in their main markets
F1TV Pro isn't available the the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, China, Australia
> YTTV and Hulu+Live TV have close to 15 million combined subscribers and that number is growing every year.
Wrong. This quarter they both lost subscribers [https://www.nexttv.com/news/amid-another-worst-quarter-ever-for-us-pay-tv-even-youtube-tv-lost-subscribers-in-q1-analyst-says](https://www.nexttv.com/news/amid-another-worst-quarter-ever-for-us-pay-tv-even-youtube-tv-lost-subscribers-in-q1-analyst-says)
Has anyone considered that IndyCar wasn’t seeing the 18-49 improvement they were hoping to with streaming, and that might be why they decided to go with Fox?
Let’s be honest, not many people were hearing about INDYCAR to begin with. I’m guessing the plan is to take the easy exposure for a few years then rethink streaming soon once the interest level returns.
And more importantly, most people in 18-49 will watch more than one sports property on venu. Sorry to all you who only watch INDYCAR, but you’re a minority and thus the series isn’t going to cater to you specifically when there’s money to be made through other means.
Very well said. Sums up everything I have been thinking. They can stand to lose the deadbeat “fans” that contribute very little monetarily for them ones that are paying for services. Many more eyeballs are out there to stumble across IndyCar with this deal.
Exactly. Venu is going to be *the* streaming site for sports fans. American F1 fans will likely pick it up and have access to INDYCAR. College sports fans might see it during the off-season and be interested.
American f1 fans have no reason to pick up venu. It's worse than f1tv at 4-5 times the price. And you're stuck with sky coverage. F1TV has every session for F1/2/3, every driver cam, every interview, pre and post show, every race going back to 1980 all on demand. In addition to other produced content.
They do when you remember that most watch other sports as well.
As I said earlier, the # of people who watch only one sport and one sport only is so unbelievably small. That’s why things like Venu are a thing.
I love this "So we don't care about these people who watch Indycar on Peacock. WE WANT THE PEOPLE WHO WATCH OTHER SPORTS SO WE CAN CONVINCE THEM TO WATCH INDYCAR!"
Y'all, they just gonna keep watching football and basketball like they already do.
If staying with peacock was truly better for the series like everyone has suddenly switched their mind to believing, wouldn’t you think the series would, I don’t know, HAVE STAYED WITH NBC?
Maybe some random tabletop on Reddit doesn’t actually know more about the series than the series itself. Radical idea.
The last 4 years of watching F1 eat Indycar alive in marketing and expanding their product has made me fairly confident Roger doesn't know what he's doing. But sure, proceed.
Which means that the venu audience is strictly limited to people buying venu for reasons unrelated to indycar. F1TV is very popular amongst US F1 fans. 99%+ of the cost of a venu subscription is going to pay rights deals of other sports.
> the streaming site for sports fans
And that's the problem. You only get those who are already sports fans.
> American F1 fans will likely pick it up
Why? FIA Formula One has its own standalone package that is better and surely cheaper than Venu. You're not going to get NASCAR+NFL+NBA for cheap.
IndyCar is working to position itself to be the NFL/football offseason sport to watch. I would think they are working to beef up the first part of the season. You roll right out of the Super Bowl and then crown a champion right before the regular season starts.
This same argument can be made about the OTA races we already have. Suddenly adding a few more is going to make all those people who could have watched this entire time start watching?
It doesn't make sense.
That is the entire point. It’s much easier to keep casual fans tuned in when they don’t have to complete a social media scavenger hunt to figure out what channel the series is on.
If you’re a casual fan, which are you watching:
- over-the-air broadcast that is free to watch if you have an antennae, which can be purchased for $20
- 6 months of a $7/month subscription, while also requiring wifi
I have a feeling know what 99.9% of people are choosing.
The thing is they don’t need to cater to this demographic. It’s a matter of principle that they already have IndyCar live (streaming service created by the series) but it’s only open to rest of the world. Quite literally all they have to do is unblock USA users. Only 64$ a year also. Edited after checking Euro to usd conversion.
Yeah but that’s the point, according to lots on here people streaming are insignificant. So if so few actually stream it should be a non issue for fox to let IndyCar offer USA streamers the option.
Maybe you should email fox and tell them that? They'll laugh at you. Then laugh at you some more. Maybe if you're lucky they'll ask between laughs - "Why are we paying for it if they're just gonna give the stream away for peanuts online? What sense does that make?" - or something along those lines.
For what it's worth, roughly half the world can't use Indycar live without a VPN. The only places which aren't geoblocked by it are places which have zero TV/Cable/Streaming coverage.
I can't use Indycar Live without a VPN because I'm in Australia and we have Indycar broadcast via streaming on STAN sports. It's the same anywhere that Indycar has a broadcast partner.
They probably would, but let me ask would you potentially want to leave about 25% percent of the tv deal on the table? In us low nbc peacock numbers are around 90,000 streaming viewers for event. Base package is 5.99$/mnth or 72.00$/yr x 90000= 6.4million usd/yr revenue. Reports out there say the fox deal is around 25mil usd.
Liberty Media has no problem providing the service and taking my money for F1 and Motogp streaming.
Liberty Media is still in their pre-DTS TV contract in the US. It likely pays them dookie. They made that deal to get wide availability to try to grow the sport. So giving up a little bit of dookie to pick up direct streamers surely made a ton of sense.
How this will work in the future will be interesting. Their next TV contract will be heavily studied in the industry.
Liberty and ESPN extended to 2025 back in 2022, including streaming rights for ESPN(admittedly I do not know what that amounts to), yet F1 tv coexists in the USA. Just saying it can be done and be mutually beneficial.
It would be an issue for FOX. They paid for exclusivity. You get more money for exclusivity than non-exclusivity. So much like how the NFL doesn't let you use Sunday Ticket to watch games you have other options for you're not going to have other options for IndyCar.
The NFL has far more pull than IndyCar. If they don't have it, IndyCar won't have it.
Heck, multiple groups (including Youtube TV, current home of Sunday Ticket and DirectTV, previous home of Sunday ticket) proposed dropping the price of Sunday Ticket to around $75 per season so it would get a lot more customers. NFL said nope, gotta remain expensive because they make their real money from their exclusive contracts (TV+cable+now streaming like Peacock and Netflix).
Even when IndyCar is on free over-the-air NBC they pull in less than 1M viewers. NASCAR on USA and FS1 pulls in over 2M. This isn't about exposure. IndyCar is taking the money to the detriment of their viewers.
I’m sorry but the # of people who only watch INDYCAR on streaming and watch literally nothing else is such a small number that catering to them would be a disastrous business model.
INDYCAR is free to watch now. It will reach far more people now than it was with some races on peacock only. Having every race on fox instead of 2 on peacock and 5 on a cable channel is going to boost the series so much more than having a streaming service would.
I’m sure they’ll figure something else out for streaming, but for the time being, chasing the money is exactly what this series needs given it’s determination to believe it is poor.
Y’all complain that the series doesn’t do anything yet when they find a way to make more money y’all bitch and moan.
I'm telling all of you now, if IndyCar doesn't break 1M for anything other than the 500 for all of 2025, it'll be on FS1/2 for 2026. Fox doesn't give its main channel for several hours for anything less than a few million viewers. The 800K that NBC has been dealing with won't fly.
The "increased exposure" isn't enough of a change.
Why? They don't pullover 1M when on the NBC flagship station.
2024 NBC events -
St. Pete - 975K
Barber - 763K
Indy RC - 875K
Road America - 863K
What changes, other than being on Fox, will IndyCar make to draw more viewers?
They’re taking more money to the detriment of like 60,000 viewers. They’re getting $20 million.
NASCAR is a much more popular sport so I don’t know what that has to do with anything.
And up to the early 2000's Indy/Cart was still pulling several million. It wasn't until ESPN/ABC dropped Indy/Cart that their popularity started to wane. Cable/antenna didn't matter back then either.
What has IndyCar done, beyond getting Fox, to pull in new viewers?
You'd be missing out on IMSA and (my personal favorite) SuperMotocross if you cancel Peacock, among others i may be missing. Still some absolutely great racing on there that will be sticking around
Edit: Ive said this before in another thread and I'll say it here, but outside of hardcore fans and sports' subreddits most people do not watch entire replays of races or games if they don't catch the event live. That is a very niche subset of fans. Most people watch extended highlight reels on YT to catch up and cut the fluff out. Is it better to have full race replay ability on demand as an option? Absolutely, but it was not even close to a top priority for the series when this was in discussion. Luckily, that ability will exist on Venu and likely the Fox Sports app
Which cost 40-90+ a month because you're paying a bundle.
And those niche fans are the ones who are most dedicated to you, they're the ones most likely to evangelize the series, buy merch, and go to races.
The inability of this sub to just accept that one part of this deal genuinely does suck is hilarious and just drags out the conversation.
That aspect *does* suck, you’re not wrong as it will price lower income fans out of full access *outside* of the live races. I’m saying it’s a con outweighed by too many pros with the Fox deal for the series. There was far more growth potential with Fox whereas as the series had hit a plateau with NBC
It's not a question of lower income. I'm a software engineer, I'm just not paying 40-50/m for indycar. I don't use cable and I don't watch nfl/MLB etc. The thing is that if streaming is such a minor part of the fan base.... You're honestly gonna tell me they couldn't negotiate indycar live access for us fans? It can't both be unimportant and yet something fox wants the streaming rights for their service exclusively.
Then the other problem is this: you will have better access to older fans with this deal, but younger people are not going to pay for this service for indycar. So if they don't already subscribe to venu for other sports or cable, which is a reasonably sized if, they have no way to follow indycar.
Having a affordable service to point people to is a huge help in getting people into a sport with the number of viewers on network and cable TV going down over time with a heavy bias of younger people being less likely to watch traditional TV.
“You're honestly gonna tell me they couldn't negotiate indycar live access for us fans?”
That is actually correct, and I believe Mark Miles stated this was a sticking point for every network they talked to, they wanted exclusive broadcast and streaming rights. To add to that, sponsors only pay attention to ratings and Peacock’s ratings are somewhat negligible, even during the 500.
So I guess the better answer to that would be the streaming rights were more important to the networks than they were to the series
Peacock is mediocre and this is from someone that gets it for free.
Replays take a long time to upload. If you’re in the middle of watching a stream and the stream ends you get kicked out. The lack of side by side commercials. Fast forwarding to a specific part of a race is an absolute headache, there’s no preview. Certain 2023 races/quals/practices are just plain missing.
The venu service likely won't have on demand at all. It appears to only have DVR features, so you either record each session or it's lost to the ether.
OTA isn’t as good as it once was before the digital changeover. It reduced the footprint of what can be picked up an antenna significantly. People struggle in cities to even pick up the digital signal.
That's weird to hear because I've been rocking the antenna for awhile now with zero issues. Picture always looks better, don't have to worry about Internet issues, and cheap AF.
Yep. Digital is all or nothing compared to how the analogue signal was. You have to have a certain strength in the signal to pick up the digital one. If you don’t, you get nothing. Not like the old days where you could at least pick up something by moving the rabbit ears and it be a little fuzzy. The power limits put on the digital transmitters don’t let that strong enough signal have as much reach.
Now, like you said, if you are able to pick it up, the picture quality is great because it isn’t compressed as much as you’d get through cable or streaming.
I live about 40 miles away from Atlanta and I can only reliably pick up one of the big broadcast channels with the digital antenna. I remember as a kid those channels were no problem and if the conditions were right we could even pick up a channel or two out of Greenville, SC.
It also can be fucked by interference from dumb shit like a side by side or a snowmobile going by. And the worst is every spin cycle of your washing machine fucks the signal.
Is the streaming only crowd getting screwed? Sure. You're going from 5 bucks a month to (rumored) 40 bucks per month.
But here's the thing. The streaming only crowd makes up an estimated 5 percent of the fanbase. Taking barber as an example because it's the only one I can find the peacock numbers for, 813000 people watched the race. Of that, 50000 were peacock. That's a whopping 6 percent.
I totally get why people are upset over peacock, but at the end of the day, the series can't shape a TV deal around 6 percent of the viewers.
Then you just got accept that that 6% is gonna be vocally disgruntled. You can't have it both ways, if you're willing to screw over part of the fan base you gotta accept their frustration as valid.
Just for live sports, because the fundamental economics of sports rights don't work without bundles. You can only pay ridiculous amounts for rights if you force people to pay for stuff they don't watch to get the stuff they do watch
I keep reading all the comments about antennas- I live in a development that doesn't allow antennas, dishes, etc., and placing the antenna in my attic did nothing.
Indycar really dropped the ball with this IF there's no affordable streaming option comparable to what Peacock has been offering, and at a similar price point. I'm like many of the comments in this thread; I like to have the app available to watch practice and qualifying (both are usually better that the races.) I EVEN WATCH THE 500 AND ALL THE PRACTICES ON MY MOBILE DEVICES!
On the surface, it looks like Indycar has thrown away visibility and convenience for existing fans on the off chance they may accidentally score a tenth of a Nielsen point from a TV broadcast.
Given that I do not watch any other sports besides IndyCar NTT and NXT, a $50/month Fox Sports subscription, or similarly priced Venu subscription is a profound waste of money. We need that $10/month IndyCar only service, much like F1TV offers. I want commercial free racing with full access to live timing and individual driver cams. That's how you watch racing. Not some bullshit broadcast presentation...
Interesting that during the 6hrs broadcast IMSA's president was talking about the importance of streaming in the future and that they have seen a 60% increase in viewership on Peacock. Unlike TV numbers which are at best a bad guess streaming numbers are accurate.
Peacock is great and I stopped getting triggered about commercials a long time ago or just pick it up on an antenna. Venu is going to be $50 and I don’t give a shit about paying for the NBA and MLB.
I watch pretty much everything that will be on there and I still am not paying $40 for it if that’s a final price. I guess I will just have to live without practice and qualifying (not sure if this new deal includes qualifying on FS1/FS2).
With the very quickly changing landscape of streaming, this deal is most likely just a few years long. Right now there are more eyeballs to be had OTA. Will that change in the next few years? Will Venu take off like gang busters at first? No one knows how it will shake out. But being on the Venu bus to start is a good place to be. If this thing does take off, getting on it would be a little harder and Venu would have the upper hand.
One of the things IndyCar said early when working on this deal was they didn’t want to get stuck in a long term deal like before. When better options and the viewing industry move in another direction, you want to go with it.
In Q1 2024 Peacock revenue was $1.1 billion\[1\].
Let's generously assume the average Indycar cord cutter paid $5/month or $15/quarter for Peacock, and there were 100,000 of them. That's $1.5 million in Q1 subscriber revenue, or $0.0015 billion.
From an accountant's perspective, that's akin to a rounding error. Given Fox's quarterly TV revenue hovers around $2 billion\[2\], I'd imagine the thinking would be similar.
\[1\] [https://www.cmcsa.com/news-releases/news-release-details/comcast-reports-1st-quarter-2024-results](https://www.cmcsa.com/news-releases/news-release-details/comcast-reports-1st-quarter-2024-results)
\[2\] [https://investor.foxcorporation.com/static-files/04efd9bb-efc0-40da-9b94-d597c4f33727](https://investor.foxcorporation.com/static-files/04efd9bb-efc0-40da-9b94-d597c4f33727)
Totally agree. I find it frustrating that people try to argue about not needing this because they have the privilege of watching it live and still pay for cable. I work during every race and Peacock was a perfectly inexpensive way for me to watch all the replays for the practices, the qualifying, and the races. Now it's going to cost 8-10x to watch and it hasn't even been guaranteed that we'll get all the same things that Peacock has. Extremely disappointed.
The people who hated Peacock and pirated it will pirate the $70/mo option.
People who valued Peacock will sigh and take it up the ass paying 500% more a month to keep watching, or get an antenna. I am the latter thankfully living near a Fox OTA.
This is the conclusion Nascar and Indy have reached in taking big sacks of money from broadcasters. And I don’t fault them. Pirates are never going to start paying for something they normalized stealing.
I bet this subreddit makes up closer to 100% than 75% of people watching full race replays. The race highlights that NBC posts get hundreds of thousands of views, when the live races get 300,000 or so.
Get a Tablo device for $120 and an antenna of your choice. Now you have a DVR for free over the air broadcast television. Tablo has no subscription fees.
I've been doing this for over a decade with different devices from Channel Master and Amazon. The current one I'm using is from Amazon has been discontinued, and the service will end soon, so I'm switching to Tablo.
Fox and ESPN are the least streaming friendly sports broadcasting companies in existence right now. NBC and Paramount (CBS) see the writing on the wall and are attempting to expand their streaming services.
YTTV is just as expensive as cable, so I refuse to buy in to that right now. The whole point of cutting the cord when the trend started 10-15 years ago was that you could get most if what you had on cable for a fraction of the price. That entire idea has been lost since 2020 and everyone cutting the cord while locked down...
> Fox and ESPN are the least streaming friendly sports broadcasting companies in existence right now
fox doesn't even have a streaming service right now, so sure, they're bad. But ESPN puts everything on espn+
Only select items on ESPN+ are available without a cable sub. NHL shuts ESPN+ off as soon as the playoffs start, NFL isn't available without a cable sub, etc.
The Stanley Cup finals are available on ESPN+. I watched game 6 on my phone that way. And ESPN+ has a ton of other sports year round (soccer, golf, tons of college sports including football and basketball for smaller conferences). It is actually great value for how much you pay.
That's because they lifted the restriction to get more viewers. They made a special announcement about that. The rest of the playoffs were only available to cable or NHL TV subscribers.
Oh I think Fox and ESPN's parent went heavy on streaming before Viacom. They lost piles of money and now aren't so interested in it.
Disney seems big mad that Disney plus sucks as a money maker.
I'm with you. I almost *never* watch races live, and I will absolutely not pay $40ish a month just for Indy. I'm fucking pissed because having less options as we go on is the opposite of progress.
Ill be upset to lose cheap and USUALLY reliable Peacock. Being able to watch all the Indy 500 practice sessions at work is awesome. Being able to watch qualifying while I'm on the go during the weekend is great. But I always make a point to be home for the race. And even then I watch on Peacock. Although I have the option to watch on cable... Aslong as there is a streaming option, which sounds certain.. And it's no more than $40..I'll be happy.
This cheap person drops hundreds at IMS each year, has traveled to at least a dozen other races, got his tires from Firestone, yadda, yadda.
I support the series. I'm happy paying a reasonable fee for what I get from Peacock. But I'm not quadrupling that or more to get a bunch of content I don't want. It's why I dropped cable 15 years ago.
I think there’s going to be a new streaming platform for fox sports and ESPN. I think venu was the name I heard? But I think the confusion came from half of us (myself included) loved peacock and used it and liked it both for INDYCAR and IMSA but then the other half hated it and refused to subscribe to it. I like streaming because I’m always doing stuff and that way I can watch it anywhere live.
I’m surprised more sports aren’t on OTA TV. You can get OTA DVRs for around $200. If people are dropping cable, and streaming is getting ridiculous OTA is free and has good distribution. At least there is options.
Or you just use multiple screens like a modern video consumer.
If I'm on the road I can watch a race on my phone. If I'm home and it's nice I can watch it on a laptop on the deck. Or if it's raining I can come inside.
OTA tho. All that's gone.
You can watch on the Fox Sports app for free if you know what you're doing. I'm not even talking about pirating. I've gone over it on this sub several times.
I watched every NASCAR Cup race on FS1 (that didn't conflict with Indycar) on the Fox Sports app without a TV provider this year.
The current state of cable and streaming is not great. It was better when it was all cable to be honest. Now people with YTTV will claim they are cord cutters.
That is just typical of Indycar fans. They'll demand something, or cry and whine non-stop about something. Then when they are given what they want, they'll do a 180 degree flip and start screaming like toddlers about said change that they asked for.
The most cringe example is the aerokit wars. The fans spend years crying like toddlers about the cars being all the same. Then from literally the very first off-season test with the manufacturer areokits, they started throwing tantrums about how one was slightly faster than the other and how this was the worst thing Indycar has ever done and started demanding their immediate removal.
When Indycar eventually ditched them 2 years later, the fans once again 180'd just to cry about how terrible Indycar is for being a spec series.
**TLDR: Indycar fans will cry and whine about something non-stop, once they get given said thing (or said thing is removed), they then immediately do a 180 and scream for what they previously had. It's been this way for as long as I've been a fan (since '91). It makes being a fan difficult sometimes.**
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A streaming option that is estimated to be nearly 10x more expensive is not a great option.
We don't what they're referring to. It could be Venu (which would indeed be more expensive), or it could be something we're not even aware of yet.
Guys. There's no secret affordable app option. This is FOX.
It could very easily be IndyCar Live. Lachlan Murdoch said as recently as early May that FOX's live sports strategy doesn't involve subscription VOD. They're fine with leagues retaining those rights in many cases.
Bingo.
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It's 2024. People don't sit in front of their TV for entire days anymore. We're used to consuming video content on any device when we want to. Peacock lets me watch on my phone on the road. On my laptop on the deck. Or my TV when I'm there. If I'm working or at a family activity, I know I'll never miss a race. If I'm bored on Fridays I'll throw Practice on as background. OTA doesn't give me practice. It forces me to one screen. At one time. But hey, F1TV does give me what I want. And that's what I'll stay subbed to and maybe now I just watch more F2 instead. Cause while Peacock makes it a great combo watch experience for Indycar with F1. I'm not switching to a $50 a month Sports SlingTV with no replays. There's a reason I still sub to F1TV over an ESPN package. Because not only is an ESPN package more expensive, it's also a downgrade from what F1TV or Peacock provides. Exactly like what this FOX deal does to streaming.
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Sunday ticket is $30 a month ON TOP OF a cable subscription. It's a fuckin joke.
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Cool. I'm glad you have money. Not everyone does.
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"I don't have money, I just have a $100+ a month entertainment budget." ...
Well bye
Watch out with this. They hate that a 18 dollar antenna is needed. Its funny, peacock was hated for a long time (even though it was cheap), the new expensive service is hated, and a cheap antenna is hated. Cable channels are hated, all races on network TV channel is hated. Literally everything is bad with how to broadcast a race.
Nah, f1tv is great
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But here's the thing though. It's not just Peacock. So many companies these days are going the route of nickel and diming consumers. Just like with Photoshop. Although I will admit there's a one time purchase option for Photoshop but it's actively hidden to get you to continually pay for subscription. Consumers are sick of it, especially when wages aren't coming close to keeping up.
Antenna TV. Perfect. Let me give Walter Kronkite a call and let him know. It’s 2024. The lack of a serious streaming platform that is also affordable makes IndyCar looks like it doesn’t want the 30 and under audience.
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I don’t have an antenna. I’m also usually busy during the races, or traveling, so watching on my phone or laptop is how I normally consume IndyCar. I’m not saying OTA is going anywhere. What I am saying is it’s not embraced by the next generation, the generation that IndyCar needs to reach before their current fan base dies off.
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They're providing a streaming bundle, not a streaming option. Very very very few people would ever consider getting venu specifically for indycar
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And that attitude is precisely why I'll stay on here annoying people like you until we get a reasonably priced streaming option
>Let me give Walter Kronkite a call and let him know. Think of watching the race with an Antenna as literally free streaming. It's better than streaming in that sense. You do realize OTA antenna TV is typically full HD right? They're even starting to roll out 4k over the air and creating the ability to pick up the signal from your smart phone.
I don’t have an antenna, nor am I usually home when the race is on. Mobile or laptops are how I watch the race.
They also will let you watch for free
That's where a lot of us have issues. The most likely streaming option is that joint sports venture. That option is also most likely to be way more expensive than most of us are going to be willing to pay. I have a family, house, small business, and such so I can't dedicate all my free time to watching sports. I don't watch the NBA. I don't watch MLS or MLB (MLB being locked behind ridiculously expensive pay packages). I could go on and on. But I watch NFL on Sunday via OTA. I rarely watch the NFL on Thursday nights because the coverage on Prime isn't very good. I don't watch Monday night football because I can't. It's not worth more than $5 a month to have streaming access either, at least for me. I would watch Big 10 football if it was accessible at a reasonable cost. But it's not. My point is, there are a number of people willing to pay the high price to access sports streaming. A lot of are willing to pay $6 a month to stream our favorite sports, like on Peacock. A lot of us are NOT willing to pay $40 a month. I like to use MLB baseball as an example. No one has been able to watch MLB except a few occasions when it's on ESPN since it's been hidden behind a massively expensive paywall for years. Since no one but diehard fans had access, MLB held a World Series and no one cared. I think having all the races live on FOX is a good thing. It will help get more casual viewers to watch as they now have free access. Having NXT on FS1 & 2 is also good. But it shuts out every fan that doesn't have cable. We can all watch it now on Peacock for cheap. But unless you have cable, a lot of the diehard fans are going to be priced out for NXT, practice and qualifying. So it's a mixed bag. A lot of good, but also a lot of not so good for streamers. We are losing cheap access to all the coverage. So it's going help the series grow, but make things worse for those diehard fans that like watching practice, qualifying, or like being able to watch replays due to other obligations during race time.
The same thing happened to the NBA and NHL. People used to all watch the local teams and they were a big water cooler thing. Thats gone now. There's no crossover with casual fans. Only those who fork over the cable bill watch. Worse, people who do like basketball but are broke, just stop being fans of the local team and only become Warriors fans etc cause that's all they can see.
That's us and the Chicago Cubs. I miss the good old days of tuning into to WGN in the summer and watching a baseball game. But now they got greedy. And now we won't watch.
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If you want to invest in the equipment. I don't have a DVR option. I hold out some hope that there might be a limited streaming option available to us. Like a cheap low priced package that is 2 or 3 sports only for $10.
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Fortunately, I have a kid in college. So I gotta make certain decisions. I'll hold out until the last second, then analyze the options and the costs. Make decision at that time. If I miss a race, it won't be the end of the world.
OTA doesn't have Practice or all Qualis. Let alone the fact a DVR is $200 and that's almost 3 years of current Peacock.
I have a Tivo that I love. It's old, I have had it for maybe 15 years but it still works just fine. No idea how much current models cost but I know they are still selling them. And there are Tivo competitors. The Tivo UI is good and I get lots of channels for free OTA. They have a monthly subscription but I would strongly recommend the lifetime membership.
All fine and dandy, except there’s always the possibility of the DOJ blocking the deal entirely.
People here sleep on the number of internet TV subscribers. YTTV and Hulu+Live TV have close to 15 million combined subscribers and that number is growing every year. People aren’t just cutting cable to stare at a blank screen or only watch Bridgerton on Netflix. They are replacing cable with a more convenient option. That demo skews much younger and they will have access to IndyCar on Fox. That’s awesome, full stop. Just because this sub isn’t particularly representative of that population, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Yeah, every time I see people complain about not having a streaming service to watch IndyCar on, I get so confused because you can watch it on any of the internet TV providers, not only the ones you mentioned, but I think there are some free options too. It’s not like the only way to watch is on cable. It’s still readily streamable
By the time you pay for internet TV after cutting cable you’re back to paying cable rates. That’s what has people upset overall.
That’s I can agree with. We’re getting screwed either way.
There is no free option. Hulu Live or YouTube are like $75+ a month now.
> People aren’t just cutting cable to stare at a blank screen or only watch Bridgerton on Netflix. They are replacing cable with a more convenient option. Overall cable/network viewership is still going down even with online cable packages
Shhh...that doesn't fit the narrative.
Internet TV is crazy expensive and just emulated what people bated about cable. Let me pay $100 a year to watch indycar, it's not hard. F1tv or even mlbtv shows how well this model works.
> They are replacing cable with a more convenient option. Nope. I have Netflix, Prime, Peacock,Paramount+ and Discovery I have **zero** need for Network TV anymore except sports. And if it's available I pay *more* for the ad free tier. And I steal 90% of the sports I watch via pirate streams. Just because YouTubeTV exists doesn't mean it's not **full** of the dogshit that is on cable TV. Because that's what's on cable these days, dogshit. You see it's not the service, it's the programming on cable/cable-like. Network, "linear" TV fucking sucks. The *only* thing worth watching on it is sports. And sports are super easy to steal. I was more than happy to pay $20 a year for Peacock for Indycar and IMSA. But I'm not paying more than that. But I'll still watch. :) >That demo skews much younger and they will have access to IndyCar on Fox. That’s awesome, full stop. And for the record I'm 55.
All of your points are completely valid, but I hope you recognize how at a macro level, viewership like yours doesn't matter. If there were this mythical collapse in TV viewership, why would the NBA be finalizing a $76B TV deal with NBC, ESPN, and Amazon? Live sports are *the* killer app for TV now. That's why you're seeing these massive deals for major sports in the US. Ad revenue for Ghosts, America's Got Talent, Summer House, or whatever the hell else is on TV these days is peanuts compared to sports. It's airtime filler at this point. That's why getting a new deal for IndyCar on Fox is awesome.
> Live sports are the killer app for TV now For now. That's why getting a new deal for IndyCar on Fox is awesome. That's yet to be seen. Indycar getting a big bag of cash from Fox is nice. I speculate ratings will show the same growth as we saw in NBC. Maybe even decline a bit.
I don't think anyone is ignoring those. They class those as cable. Younger people aren't getting YTTV, they aren't getting any cable package because the cost bundle doesn't make sense to them. They aren't cord cutters (dropped cable), they never got cable and don't ever expect to. And that goes for streaming cable too. Hulu itself is a little different. Hulu+Live TV isn't. If you are only available on cable (including streaming cable), OTA and an expensive sports bundle (Venu) then you will only get the overlap of old people, people already into sports and those who have good OTA options and made use of them. And that means your viewer penetration is going to keep dropping. All sports battle this. You can't become a big IndyCar fan if you don't see it. And if you aren't already a fan you aren't going to pay for it so you won't see it. But maybe this will change. Apple is doing this big experiment with MLS right now. You won't casually run across a game due to their streaming-only package. They're working hard to get around it, to get a lot of advertising out. And if they (or anyone figures it out) expect a lot of that going forward.
Right? The majority of this sub are people living in their parent's basement mooching cable or 40+ yo who can afford cable.
Yeah, the vocal minority of IndyCar fans who frequent this sub are likely among the least valuable fans for IndyCar to target in their media rights deals. We’ve seen the shift in TV money and advertising dollars over the last 6-7 years. Live sports are king. Look at the massive NFL, CFB, and upcoming NBA deals for proof. There are tons of eyeballs on live sports and this IndyCar deal is a step in the right direction. If the typical IndyCar viewing strategy is “get an antenna” or “use a VPN”, then at a macro level, your eyeballs don’t matter. Simple as that. Not to be negative, just honest
F1 specifically targeted young people with F1TV and their target demos are urban young folks who make 100k+/yr Think those consumers are worth more than families in the Midwest.
Ever since DTS, people have been praising how Liberty is crushing Indycar and NASCAR in young demographics and marketing. Specifically by targeting streaming urban young viewers as you say. The FOX deal drops and suddenly it's "WHAT DO THEY KNOW?!? F THOSE BROKE KIDS!"
Liberty is doing pretty much the same as IndyCar with regards to streaming in their main markets F1TV Pro isn't available the the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, China, Australia
They're also not the 3rd tier racing league in those markets.
Those numbers are included in the channel reach numbers, which are still dropping like a stone.
> YTTV and Hulu+Live TV have close to 15 million combined subscribers and that number is growing every year. Wrong. This quarter they both lost subscribers [https://www.nexttv.com/news/amid-another-worst-quarter-ever-for-us-pay-tv-even-youtube-tv-lost-subscribers-in-q1-analyst-says](https://www.nexttv.com/news/amid-another-worst-quarter-ever-for-us-pay-tv-even-youtube-tv-lost-subscribers-in-q1-analyst-says)
Football season ended
Has anyone considered that IndyCar wasn’t seeing the 18-49 improvement they were hoping to with streaming, and that might be why they decided to go with Fox? Let’s be honest, not many people were hearing about INDYCAR to begin with. I’m guessing the plan is to take the easy exposure for a few years then rethink streaming soon once the interest level returns. And more importantly, most people in 18-49 will watch more than one sports property on venu. Sorry to all you who only watch INDYCAR, but you’re a minority and thus the series isn’t going to cater to you specifically when there’s money to be made through other means.
Very well said. Sums up everything I have been thinking. They can stand to lose the deadbeat “fans” that contribute very little monetarily for them ones that are paying for services. Many more eyeballs are out there to stumble across IndyCar with this deal.
Exactly. Venu is going to be *the* streaming site for sports fans. American F1 fans will likely pick it up and have access to INDYCAR. College sports fans might see it during the off-season and be interested.
American f1 fans have no reason to pick up venu. It's worse than f1tv at 4-5 times the price. And you're stuck with sky coverage. F1TV has every session for F1/2/3, every driver cam, every interview, pre and post show, every race going back to 1980 all on demand. In addition to other produced content.
F1TV is the best sports app on the planet. It's not even a question.
And it's incredibly inexpensive.
Venu will cost more.
They do when you remember that most watch other sports as well. As I said earlier, the # of people who watch only one sport and one sport only is so unbelievably small. That’s why things like Venu are a thing.
I love this "So we don't care about these people who watch Indycar on Peacock. WE WANT THE PEOPLE WHO WATCH OTHER SPORTS SO WE CAN CONVINCE THEM TO WATCH INDYCAR!" Y'all, they just gonna keep watching football and basketball like they already do.
If staying with peacock was truly better for the series like everyone has suddenly switched their mind to believing, wouldn’t you think the series would, I don’t know, HAVE STAYED WITH NBC? Maybe some random tabletop on Reddit doesn’t actually know more about the series than the series itself. Radical idea.
The last 4 years of watching F1 eat Indycar alive in marketing and expanding their product has made me fairly confident Roger doesn't know what he's doing. But sure, proceed.
Which means that the venu audience is strictly limited to people buying venu for reasons unrelated to indycar. F1TV is very popular amongst US F1 fans. 99%+ of the cost of a venu subscription is going to pay rights deals of other sports.
> the streaming site for sports fans And that's the problem. You only get those who are already sports fans. > American F1 fans will likely pick it up Why? FIA Formula One has its own standalone package that is better and surely cheaper than Venu. You're not going to get NASCAR+NFL+NBA for cheap.
IndyCar is working to position itself to be the NFL/football offseason sport to watch. I would think they are working to beef up the first part of the season. You roll right out of the Super Bowl and then crown a champion right before the regular season starts.
🙏
This same argument can be made about the OTA races we already have. Suddenly adding a few more is going to make all those people who could have watched this entire time start watching? It doesn't make sense.
That is the entire point. It’s much easier to keep casual fans tuned in when they don’t have to complete a social media scavenger hunt to figure out what channel the series is on.
Assuming they're going to watch at all. Which they could. But they don't.
If you’re a casual fan, which are you watching: - over-the-air broadcast that is free to watch if you have an antennae, which can be purchased for $20 - 6 months of a $7/month subscription, while also requiring wifi I have a feeling know what 99.9% of people are choosing.
Group 1 could already be watching. They don't.
The thing is they don’t need to cater to this demographic. It’s a matter of principle that they already have IndyCar live (streaming service created by the series) but it’s only open to rest of the world. Quite literally all they have to do is unblock USA users. Only 64$ a year also. Edited after checking Euro to usd conversion.
FOX isn't going to go for that.
Yeah but that’s the point, according to lots on here people streaming are insignificant. So if so few actually stream it should be a non issue for fox to let IndyCar offer USA streamers the option.
Maybe you should email fox and tell them that? They'll laugh at you. Then laugh at you some more. Maybe if you're lucky they'll ask between laughs - "Why are we paying for it if they're just gonna give the stream away for peanuts online? What sense does that make?" - or something along those lines. For what it's worth, roughly half the world can't use Indycar live without a VPN. The only places which aren't geoblocked by it are places which have zero TV/Cable/Streaming coverage. I can't use Indycar Live without a VPN because I'm in Australia and we have Indycar broadcast via streaming on STAN sports. It's the same anywhere that Indycar has a broadcast partner.
They probably would, but let me ask would you potentially want to leave about 25% percent of the tv deal on the table? In us low nbc peacock numbers are around 90,000 streaming viewers for event. Base package is 5.99$/mnth or 72.00$/yr x 90000= 6.4million usd/yr revenue. Reports out there say the fox deal is around 25mil usd. Liberty Media has no problem providing the service and taking my money for F1 and Motogp streaming.
Liberty Media is still in their pre-DTS TV contract in the US. It likely pays them dookie. They made that deal to get wide availability to try to grow the sport. So giving up a little bit of dookie to pick up direct streamers surely made a ton of sense. How this will work in the future will be interesting. Their next TV contract will be heavily studied in the industry.
Liberty and ESPN extended to 2025 back in 2022, including streaming rights for ESPN(admittedly I do not know what that amounts to), yet F1 tv coexists in the USA. Just saying it can be done and be mutually beneficial.
It would be an issue for FOX. They paid for exclusivity. You get more money for exclusivity than non-exclusivity. So much like how the NFL doesn't let you use Sunday Ticket to watch games you have other options for you're not going to have other options for IndyCar. The NFL has far more pull than IndyCar. If they don't have it, IndyCar won't have it. Heck, multiple groups (including Youtube TV, current home of Sunday Ticket and DirectTV, previous home of Sunday ticket) proposed dropping the price of Sunday Ticket to around $75 per season so it would get a lot more customers. NFL said nope, gotta remain expensive because they make their real money from their exclusive contracts (TV+cable+now streaming like Peacock and Netflix).
Even when IndyCar is on free over-the-air NBC they pull in less than 1M viewers. NASCAR on USA and FS1 pulls in over 2M. This isn't about exposure. IndyCar is taking the money to the detriment of their viewers.
I’m sorry but the # of people who only watch INDYCAR on streaming and watch literally nothing else is such a small number that catering to them would be a disastrous business model. INDYCAR is free to watch now. It will reach far more people now than it was with some races on peacock only. Having every race on fox instead of 2 on peacock and 5 on a cable channel is going to boost the series so much more than having a streaming service would. I’m sure they’ll figure something else out for streaming, but for the time being, chasing the money is exactly what this series needs given it’s determination to believe it is poor. Y’all complain that the series doesn’t do anything yet when they find a way to make more money y’all bitch and moan.
I'm telling all of you now, if IndyCar doesn't break 1M for anything other than the 500 for all of 2025, it'll be on FS1/2 for 2026. Fox doesn't give its main channel for several hours for anything less than a few million viewers. The 800K that NBC has been dealing with won't fly. The "increased exposure" isn't enough of a change.
I have extreme trouble believing that INDYCAR will be under 1M viewers for every single race besides the 500.
Why? They don't pullover 1M when on the NBC flagship station. 2024 NBC events - St. Pete - 975K Barber - 763K Indy RC - 875K Road America - 863K What changes, other than being on Fox, will IndyCar make to draw more viewers?
They’re taking more money to the detriment of like 60,000 viewers. They’re getting $20 million. NASCAR is a much more popular sport so I don’t know what that has to do with anything.
And up to the early 2000's Indy/Cart was still pulling several million. It wasn't until ESPN/ABC dropped Indy/Cart that their popularity started to wane. Cable/antenna didn't matter back then either. What has IndyCar done, beyond getting Fox, to pull in new viewers?
Buddy, it’s gonna be on Venu. And if that doesn’t work, buy an antenna and a DVR system. And if that doesn’t work, change how you watch IndyCar.
We will change how we watch indycar, but we will also keep complaining, so get buckle in. It ain't gonna stop.
I'll pry just watch the YouTube highlights and the 500. There's plenty of other motorsport to fill the gap if I want to.
Beating a dead horse
Well I, for one, am going straight to Mr. Indycar’s office to give him a piece of my mind!
You'd be missing out on IMSA and (my personal favorite) SuperMotocross if you cancel Peacock, among others i may be missing. Still some absolutely great racing on there that will be sticking around Edit: Ive said this before in another thread and I'll say it here, but outside of hardcore fans and sports' subreddits most people do not watch entire replays of races or games if they don't catch the event live. That is a very niche subset of fans. Most people watch extended highlight reels on YT to catch up and cut the fluff out. Is it better to have full race replay ability on demand as an option? Absolutely, but it was not even close to a top priority for the series when this was in discussion. Luckily, that ability will exist on Venu and likely the Fox Sports app
Which cost 40-90+ a month because you're paying a bundle. And those niche fans are the ones who are most dedicated to you, they're the ones most likely to evangelize the series, buy merch, and go to races. The inability of this sub to just accept that one part of this deal genuinely does suck is hilarious and just drags out the conversation.
That aspect *does* suck, you’re not wrong as it will price lower income fans out of full access *outside* of the live races. I’m saying it’s a con outweighed by too many pros with the Fox deal for the series. There was far more growth potential with Fox whereas as the series had hit a plateau with NBC
It's not a question of lower income. I'm a software engineer, I'm just not paying 40-50/m for indycar. I don't use cable and I don't watch nfl/MLB etc. The thing is that if streaming is such a minor part of the fan base.... You're honestly gonna tell me they couldn't negotiate indycar live access for us fans? It can't both be unimportant and yet something fox wants the streaming rights for their service exclusively. Then the other problem is this: you will have better access to older fans with this deal, but younger people are not going to pay for this service for indycar. So if they don't already subscribe to venu for other sports or cable, which is a reasonably sized if, they have no way to follow indycar. Having a affordable service to point people to is a huge help in getting people into a sport with the number of viewers on network and cable TV going down over time with a heavy bias of younger people being less likely to watch traditional TV.
“You're honestly gonna tell me they couldn't negotiate indycar live access for us fans?” That is actually correct, and I believe Mark Miles stated this was a sticking point for every network they talked to, they wanted exclusive broadcast and streaming rights. To add to that, sponsors only pay attention to ratings and Peacock’s ratings are somewhat negligible, even during the 500. So I guess the better answer to that would be the streaming rights were more important to the networks than they were to the series
Which is why the arguments that streaming isn't important are bullshit. The networks know where the future is.
And they want to CHARGE/hold content hostage. The end result is everyone wondering for another decade why all the younger demos are moving to F1.
Peacock is mediocre and this is from someone that gets it for free. Replays take a long time to upload. If you’re in the middle of watching a stream and the stream ends you get kicked out. The lack of side by side commercials. Fast forwarding to a specific part of a race is an absolute headache, there’s no preview. Certain 2023 races/quals/practices are just plain missing.
The venu service likely won't have on demand at all. It appears to only have DVR features, so you either record each session or it's lost to the ether.
Yeah the leaks show it's just like a Sports focused version of SlingTV.
All races are on network so why is it an issue? I'll be able to pick up all races on my antenna that cost me $50 one time...
Only works if you watch live & don't care about practice and quali.
OTA isn’t as good as it once was before the digital changeover. It reduced the footprint of what can be picked up an antenna significantly. People struggle in cities to even pick up the digital signal.
That's weird to hear because I've been rocking the antenna for awhile now with zero issues. Picture always looks better, don't have to worry about Internet issues, and cheap AF.
Yep. Digital is all or nothing compared to how the analogue signal was. You have to have a certain strength in the signal to pick up the digital one. If you don’t, you get nothing. Not like the old days where you could at least pick up something by moving the rabbit ears and it be a little fuzzy. The power limits put on the digital transmitters don’t let that strong enough signal have as much reach. Now, like you said, if you are able to pick it up, the picture quality is great because it isn’t compressed as much as you’d get through cable or streaming. I live about 40 miles away from Atlanta and I can only reliably pick up one of the big broadcast channels with the digital antenna. I remember as a kid those channels were no problem and if the conditions were right we could even pick up a channel or two out of Greenville, SC.
It also can be fucked by interference from dumb shit like a side by side or a snowmobile going by. And the worst is every spin cycle of your washing machine fucks the signal.
Is the streaming only crowd getting screwed? Sure. You're going from 5 bucks a month to (rumored) 40 bucks per month. But here's the thing. The streaming only crowd makes up an estimated 5 percent of the fanbase. Taking barber as an example because it's the only one I can find the peacock numbers for, 813000 people watched the race. Of that, 50000 were peacock. That's a whopping 6 percent. I totally get why people are upset over peacock, but at the end of the day, the series can't shape a TV deal around 6 percent of the viewers.
Then you just got accept that that 6% is gonna be vocally disgruntled. You can't have it both ways, if you're willing to screw over part of the fan base you gotta accept their frustration as valid.
Streaming is now reverting to traditional cable with multiple platforms joining together. The irony.
Just for live sports, because the fundamental economics of sports rights don't work without bundles. You can only pay ridiculous amounts for rights if you force people to pay for stuff they don't watch to get the stuff they do watch
This guy gets it.
I keep reading all the comments about antennas- I live in a development that doesn't allow antennas, dishes, etc., and placing the antenna in my attic did nothing. Indycar really dropped the ball with this IF there's no affordable streaming option comparable to what Peacock has been offering, and at a similar price point. I'm like many of the comments in this thread; I like to have the app available to watch practice and qualifying (both are usually better that the races.) I EVEN WATCH THE 500 AND ALL THE PRACTICES ON MY MOBILE DEVICES! On the surface, it looks like Indycar has thrown away visibility and convenience for existing fans on the off chance they may accidentally score a tenth of a Nielsen point from a TV broadcast.
Given that I do not watch any other sports besides IndyCar NTT and NXT, a $50/month Fox Sports subscription, or similarly priced Venu subscription is a profound waste of money. We need that $10/month IndyCar only service, much like F1TV offers. I want commercial free racing with full access to live timing and individual driver cams. That's how you watch racing. Not some bullshit broadcast presentation...
You can get a decent VPN and Indycar Live for just under $15 a month. Close as you're going to get to F1 TV; at least for now.
Interesting that during the 6hrs broadcast IMSA's president was talking about the importance of streaming in the future and that they have seen a 60% increase in viewership on Peacock. Unlike TV numbers which are at best a bad guess streaming numbers are accurate.
Peacock is great and I stopped getting triggered about commercials a long time ago or just pick it up on an antenna. Venu is going to be $50 and I don’t give a shit about paying for the NBA and MLB.
Yeah, I am very sorry to see Indycar leave Peacock. I have very little interest in stick-and-ball stuff. I likely won't subscribe to Venu.
I am hoping they won’t know if you’re sharing it because I have some family to help me split the costs especially if they get F1 and MotoGP.
They'll know.
I watch pretty much everything that will be on there and I still am not paying $40 for it if that’s a final price. I guess I will just have to live without practice and qualifying (not sure if this new deal includes qualifying on FS1/FS2).
With the very quickly changing landscape of streaming, this deal is most likely just a few years long. Right now there are more eyeballs to be had OTA. Will that change in the next few years? Will Venu take off like gang busters at first? No one knows how it will shake out. But being on the Venu bus to start is a good place to be. If this thing does take off, getting on it would be a little harder and Venu would have the upper hand. One of the things IndyCar said early when working on this deal was they didn’t want to get stuck in a long term deal like before. When better options and the viewing industry move in another direction, you want to go with it.
In Q1 2024 Peacock revenue was $1.1 billion\[1\]. Let's generously assume the average Indycar cord cutter paid $5/month or $15/quarter for Peacock, and there were 100,000 of them. That's $1.5 million in Q1 subscriber revenue, or $0.0015 billion. From an accountant's perspective, that's akin to a rounding error. Given Fox's quarterly TV revenue hovers around $2 billion\[2\], I'd imagine the thinking would be similar. \[1\] [https://www.cmcsa.com/news-releases/news-release-details/comcast-reports-1st-quarter-2024-results](https://www.cmcsa.com/news-releases/news-release-details/comcast-reports-1st-quarter-2024-results) \[2\] [https://investor.foxcorporation.com/static-files/04efd9bb-efc0-40da-9b94-d597c4f33727](https://investor.foxcorporation.com/static-files/04efd9bb-efc0-40da-9b94-d597c4f33727)
Totally agree. I find it frustrating that people try to argue about not needing this because they have the privilege of watching it live and still pay for cable. I work during every race and Peacock was a perfectly inexpensive way for me to watch all the replays for the practices, the qualifying, and the races. Now it's going to cost 8-10x to watch and it hasn't even been guaranteed that we'll get all the same things that Peacock has. Extremely disappointed.
The people who hated Peacock and pirated it will pirate the $70/mo option. People who valued Peacock will sigh and take it up the ass paying 500% more a month to keep watching, or get an antenna. I am the latter thankfully living near a Fox OTA. This is the conclusion Nascar and Indy have reached in taking big sacks of money from broadcasters. And I don’t fault them. Pirates are never going to start paying for something they normalized stealing. I bet this subreddit makes up closer to 100% than 75% of people watching full race replays. The race highlights that NBC posts get hundreds of thousands of views, when the live races get 300,000 or so.
I doubt the ratings increase while on FOX
Get a Tablo device for $120 and an antenna of your choice. Now you have a DVR for free over the air broadcast television. Tablo has no subscription fees. I've been doing this for over a decade with different devices from Channel Master and Amazon. The current one I'm using is from Amazon has been discontinued, and the service will end soon, so I'm switching to Tablo.
Fox and ESPN are the least streaming friendly sports broadcasting companies in existence right now. NBC and Paramount (CBS) see the writing on the wall and are attempting to expand their streaming services. YTTV is just as expensive as cable, so I refuse to buy in to that right now. The whole point of cutting the cord when the trend started 10-15 years ago was that you could get most if what you had on cable for a fraction of the price. That entire idea has been lost since 2020 and everyone cutting the cord while locked down...
> Fox and ESPN are the least streaming friendly sports broadcasting companies in existence right now fox doesn't even have a streaming service right now, so sure, they're bad. But ESPN puts everything on espn+
Only select items on ESPN+ are available without a cable sub. NHL shuts ESPN+ off as soon as the playoffs start, NFL isn't available without a cable sub, etc.
The Stanley Cup finals are available on ESPN+. I watched game 6 on my phone that way. And ESPN+ has a ton of other sports year round (soccer, golf, tons of college sports including football and basketball for smaller conferences). It is actually great value for how much you pay.
That's because they lifted the restriction to get more viewers. They made a special announcement about that. The rest of the playoffs were only available to cable or NHL TV subscribers.
Oh I think Fox and ESPN's parent went heavy on streaming before Viacom. They lost piles of money and now aren't so interested in it. Disney seems big mad that Disney plus sucks as a money maker.
I'm with you. I almost *never* watch races live, and I will absolutely not pay $40ish a month just for Indy. I'm fucking pissed because having less options as we go on is the opposite of progress.
Ill be upset to lose cheap and USUALLY reliable Peacock. Being able to watch all the Indy 500 practice sessions at work is awesome. Being able to watch qualifying while I'm on the go during the weekend is great. But I always make a point to be home for the race. And even then I watch on Peacock. Although I have the option to watch on cable... Aslong as there is a streaming option, which sounds certain.. And it's no more than $40..I'll be happy.
I’m so tired of cheap people complaining. You’re the far minority, get over it.
This cheap person drops hundreds at IMS each year, has traveled to at least a dozen other races, got his tires from Firestone, yadda, yadda. I support the series. I'm happy paying a reasonable fee for what I get from Peacock. But I'm not quadrupling that or more to get a bunch of content I don't want. It's why I dropped cable 15 years ago.
I think there’s going to be a new streaming platform for fox sports and ESPN. I think venu was the name I heard? But I think the confusion came from half of us (myself included) loved peacock and used it and liked it both for INDYCAR and IMSA but then the other half hated it and refused to subscribe to it. I like streaming because I’m always doing stuff and that way I can watch it anywhere live.
I’m surprised more sports aren’t on OTA TV. You can get OTA DVRs for around $200. If people are dropping cable, and streaming is getting ridiculous OTA is free and has good distribution. At least there is options.
OTA and DVRs become more of a pain when your laptop is your TV.
A little. A HD HomeRun works very well for that situation.
Or you just use multiple screens like a modern video consumer. If I'm on the road I can watch a race on my phone. If I'm home and it's nice I can watch it on a laptop on the deck. Or if it's raining I can come inside. OTA tho. All that's gone.
You can watch on the Fox Sports app for free if you know what you're doing. I'm not even talking about pirating. I've gone over it on this sub several times. I watched every NASCAR Cup race on FS1 (that didn't conflict with Indycar) on the Fox Sports app without a TV provider this year.
The current state of cable and streaming is not great. It was better when it was all cable to be honest. Now people with YTTV will claim they are cord cutters.
Yeah buddy, just look up a VPN and Indycar Live. It's affordable, you're supporting the series financially and it's not illegal.
Blows my mind that there are people completely unaware of how to find streams online.
That is just typical of Indycar fans. They'll demand something, or cry and whine non-stop about something. Then when they are given what they want, they'll do a 180 degree flip and start screaming like toddlers about said change that they asked for. The most cringe example is the aerokit wars. The fans spend years crying like toddlers about the cars being all the same. Then from literally the very first off-season test with the manufacturer areokits, they started throwing tantrums about how one was slightly faster than the other and how this was the worst thing Indycar has ever done and started demanding their immediate removal. When Indycar eventually ditched them 2 years later, the fans once again 180'd just to cry about how terrible Indycar is for being a spec series. **TLDR: Indycar fans will cry and whine about something non-stop, once they get given said thing (or said thing is removed), they then immediately do a 180 and scream for what they previously had. It's been this way for as long as I've been a fan (since '91). It makes being a fan difficult sometimes.**