Does ESPN’s interest in O’Reilly mean bigger deals are coming?
Who wants free racing, amirite?
Jokes aside, when NASCAR announced this week that the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series plans to move its practice and qualifying sessions over to ESPN from its current home on the network’s free streaming app, some fans voiced their well-deserved displeasure.
The good news is that with most streaming packages through popular providers, fans get ESPN Unlimited for free. Viewers just have to activate a code through their provider. YouTube TV, however, does not have this ability. I could explain to you, dear reader, how I know that, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
While the deal undoubtedly caused some unrest among the fanbase, it also revealed that ESPN might be interested in the current state of the sport, even if said interest is a small amount at this point.
The current broadcast model is broken. The numbers show that a series needs a consistent broadcast home to be successful, because in today’s world of diversified streaming, the casual fan who makes up the majority of viewership simply won’t pay for multiple streaming services to watch a 36-race season. With that in mind, it’s more than interesting that ESPN wanted a piece of whatever The CW has cooking with the O’Reilly Series.
If it continues to do well, I could see a future in which ESPN decides that the O’Reilly Series is the perfect vessel for it to dip back into NASCAR. If that ends up being the case, the sport could finally trend back toward being on a marquee sports network as opposed to bouncing around from station to station like it does now.
What’s to make of Steve O’Donnell’s first week at the helm?
By the time you’re reading this column, there’s a good chance that Steve O’Donnell has completed his first full week as NASCAR’s CEO. There’s no such thing as a slow news week in this sport, but this one has been especially exciting as well as frustrating.
From Carson Hocevar getting his first win and his exuberant celebration afterward to the O’Reilly streaming news, O’Donnell hasn’t had a lot of time to get his feet wet. How does his first week grade out, then?
Overall, O’Donnell has done just about everything one could ask and said all the right things in his first week as head honcho. He made sure to repeatedly state that he wants the drivers’ personalities to shine through first and foremost. The new CEO even announced some impressive new sponsorships in the process, with the likes of Kubota and Solo coming on board.
Any PR rep will rightly tell you that all these announcements were planned to ensure the transition is as smooth as possible. But even so, hearing drivers say that O’Donnell is viewed as much more of a friend in the garage than some of his co-workers is a relief.
NASCAR as a whole is still trying to rid itself of the sport-changing trial it just went through during the offseason, and a few high-level leadership changes were always going to be part of that equation. Did many expect a shakeup of this magnitude? No. But could it be a good thing for the sport as a whole? Absolutely.
No matter how well this first week went, though, it’s worth remembering that we aren’t even halfway through the calendar, with plenty more racing ahead of us than what’s behind.
What do Jeff Dickerson’s comments tell us about the latest developments in JGR’s lawsuit against Chris Gabehart?
For those who aren’t chronically online, Spire Motorsports CEO and co-owner Jeff Dickerson went on Athletic reporter Jeff Gluck’s podcast April 30 and fully dropped the mic on Joe Gibbs Racing and its ongoing lawsuit against Chris Gabehart, Spire’s director of competition and former JGR crew chief.
In the line of questioning, Gluck makes sure to differentiate between the case JGR has against Gabehart and the one it filed against Spire as a whole. In the former, most signs currently point to JGR winning that case, but as Dickerson alluded to in his answer, the latter has been a different story.
If JGR wins the case against Gabehart but gets nowhere in its case against Spire, this litigation will all have been for naught, barring a crazy rule change after the fact. I’ve been open about the idea that the longer this legal battle drags out, the worse it looks for JGR, which did respond to Dickerson’s comments with a statement.
What Dickerson says in that clip will most definitely be used in some sort of deposition at some point. But if it’s in a case that JGR has zero momentum in, it won’t matter all that much. And once you have to start publicly defending your reasoning for filing suit in the first place, referencing details about your team completely outside the scope of the case itself, the plot gets harder to find.
Edit: 9:44 p.m. ET, April 30
Denny Hamlin is always good at adding some context, isn’t he? He responded to Dickerson’s interview in full force, stating that Dickerson was lying about communications he had with Gabehart before deleting evidence of said conversations.
While Hamlin certainly gives credence to JGR’s claim, the fact still remains that Dickerson and Spire do already have an alliance with Hendrick Motorsports, which, in Dickerson’s words, makes the desire for JGR setup information a bit pointless as a team.
I would wager, though, that this podcast isn’t the last we’ll hear of the squabble this weekend. Prepare for the media scrums, folks.
Should NASCAR run more events alongside other national touring series like High Limit? And should those extend beyond dirt?
While I sit and write this column, High Limit Racing is on in the background at Texas Motor Speedway in partnership with NASCAR this weekend. For those unfamiliar with the dirt racing world, that’s the winged 410 sprint car series owned by Brad Sweet and Kyle Larson.
No one will argue the fact that NASCAR has its fair share of snoozefest races on Sundays. But as for earlier in the week, some of the best racing in the country takes place on Thursday nights just outside the NASCAR tracks, just as it did last week at the Talladega dirt track.
Here’s the pitch, then: race something every Thursday night, either on the same property as that weekend’s track or somewhere around it, and make it a NASCAR-partnered broadcast. If you can get a national touring series to schedule a race close by on that same weekend, do it, and give other forms of oval racing a chance to lead into the weekend.
With the rise in popularity and quality of FloRacing broadcasts, the product is more than satisfactory for a national audience, whether that’s an open-wheel dirt show, a short-track asphalt late-model race, or even bandolero or legends car racing on some infield circuits.
There’s no downside to showcasing high-level grassroots racing, if you can even call it that anymore, and it only shows that oval racing is not just the only product that fans can find on TV each weekend. Additionally, if local tracks could receive a share of streaming revenue, it would help keep gates open across the country.
It’s a win-win for all involved, so why not make it happen?
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for multiple automotive news outlets, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host, and a PhD. student at a premier college of media and mass communication. Tanner began working with Frontstretch in 2022, covering the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series.
I’d much rather have ESPN over Amazon and I feel Better Things are Due for the Cup Series, especially a Single Sponsor that cares about Indianapolis and Our Families (Not in that Order).
As bad as this latest TV deal has been for viewership, I don’t see them chasing this many different broadcast partners again.
ESPN is horrible at broadcasting just about every sport they have. If they want to stream the CW broadcast to the masses, great. But ESPN is not the be all end all for broadcasting sports. Unless you are looking for zero enthusiasm in the booth and them talking about everything except the game they are covering. If you think FOX or NBC was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Please no, Nascar, just say no to ESPN.
The only way I’d enjoy watching racing on ESPN would be if Bob Jenkins, Larry Nuber and Benny Parsons were around as commentators.