This past weekend FOX produced its first IndyCar broadcast of a new partnership, televising the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and showcasing Alex Palou’s jumpstart on the 2025 season.
The broadcast was the culmination of an offseason filled with heavy investment by the network, which included the production and wide distribution of multiple high-quality commercials featuring the sport’s top drivers.
Though there was a lot of work that led up to the first race of the year, the early races of the season can be seen as a precursor to the Indianapolis 500 in late May.
IndyCar’s marquee event traditionally draws five or more times the television audience, and fans regular fill over 300,000 seats to watch the race in person at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Speaking during the St. Pete weekend, FOX Sports CEO Eric Shanks talked about plans already in motion for the Indy 500. He also gave a preview of the ambitions he has towards increasing the prevalence of wagering on the outcome, building on the model used in horse racing.
“We are going to blow the doors off of Indy,” said Shanks. “We’re going to bring everything that FOX has to bear.
“We have personalities that we probably haven’t announced yet, but there will be an enormous amount of FOX personalities and non-FOX personalities doing everything that you could imagine there. We’re going to be cross-promoting with our other sports, and I think we have a two and a half hour pre-race show that day.
“The other thing with the 500 that I’m working on really hard with these guys is I really want to turn the Indy 500 into more of a Kentucky Derby day from a wagering standpoint.
“It’s hard to understand how to wager on motorsports. You just kind of don’t get it, but on Kentucky Derby day even if you don’t know anything about horseracing, you put down an exacta or a trifecta, you got win, place, show.
“How can we figure out how to get that type of broad attention around an event that honestly kind of feels a lot like horseracing that day? That kind of stuff we’re working on as well and hopefully have an announcement in the near future.”
Wagers on races are already available to the public in the US, with fans in many states being able to put money on the winner of the most popular motorsports events right from their phone.
It seems that Shanks and FOX would like to have more focus put on the wagers available, however, in order to draw in people that are not necessarily fans of IndyCar.
The 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 takes place on May 25, with Josef Newgarden looking to become the first driver in history to win the event in three consecutive years.
