Dirt
FOX Sports & NHRA Partnership
Proving a Difference Maker
With a new broadcast partner,
live coverage and in-house
production, drag racing on
television is fast-changing
By Brandon W. Mudd
42 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
network, and that just hasn’t been the case. Our
ratings have been stunningly high.”
For the first 12 events, in total viewership,
which includes NHRA’s qualifying shows, total
viewership numbers are up 41-percent from a year
ago with an average of 753,000 people watching
Sunday broadcasts, up from 532,000 last year.
“That’s an incredible number,” Blount says, “far
better than we could have ever hoped for. The
first two big ratings we had were Sunday in Vegas
with almost 1.3 million and then we topped it in
Atlanta with the finals in the Southern Nationals
with 1.36 million.”
While it’s hard to find ratings numbers for
decades of television coverage, Blount says it is
believed the finals in Atlanta, which saw Doug
Kalitta beat JR Todd with the closest margin of
victory in the sport’s history, is the highest-rating
NHRA program ever.
With 500 hours of programming scheduled
this year, as opposed to the 125 hours from last
year and years prior, Blount says fans can find
NHRA programming, whether it’s reruns of the
Mello Yello series, Pro Mod coverage, or Lucas Oil
Sportsman coverage, nearly every day of the week.
Another reason for the high viewership is FOX
knows racing. The company has aired half of
NASCAR’s 36 races every season since 2001 and
has been the only network to consistently air the
races, with the second half of the season brought
to fans courtesy of NBC, TNT, and ESPN. While
ESPN used to have the big three American motorsports (NASCAR, IndyCar, NHRA), now only
IndyCar remains at the World Wide Leader as
an ABC slot filler.
FOX Sports’ Vice President of Media Relations
Erik Arneson says it’s not just about stuffing the
coffers with racing, but using those shows to help
each other. “What I think gets discounted when
you say (FOX) has a lot of motorsports is how
the fan bases connect. Some fan bases seem to
work better or transition better from one type of
Issue 111
PHOTOS: NHRA / NATIONAL DRAGSTER
W
hen the NHRA announced
last year it would dissolve its
longstanding relationship with
television partner ESPN early to
make the move to FOX Sports for 2016 and beyond, there was an almost universal cry of relief
from fans.
Gone would be the Saturday nights of college
football games running long, pre-empting the
qualifying show and completely hosing fans’ DVR
recordings. Gone would be turning to ESPN2
expecting to see nitro cars and instead seeing
L ittle League baseball or a dog show. Gone would
be the days of NHRA programming relegated to
3 A.M. timeslots.
The move came
amidst several changes to the sanction, including the ascension
of Peter Clifford to the
presidency of NHRA
and the hiring of former ESPN writer Terry
Blount to take over duties as vice president
of public relations
and communications.
New people, new rules
in Pro Stock, and a
new television package bringing production of the television
coverage in-house and
quadrupling the number of hours of NHRA
coverage on FOX Sports 1, FOX Sports 2, and,
during the Western Swing and the U.S. Nationals,
regular FOX broadcast TV.
While fans, racers, and the media may argue
about the Pro Stock rules and other changes to
the classes, there is no doubt the right people
made the right decisions about the sport’s television coverage. The numbers, thanks in large
part to live television on Sunday being the norm
instead of a rarely-used novelty, have been absolutely staggering. Blount says he, along with
executives at FOX, have been pleasantly blown
away by the information they’ve received.
“First of all, going into the season, what Fox told
us and what we expected was the ratings would
probably go down a little bit,” he says. “Because
what happens when you change networks, people
just don’t know where to find you and it takes
them awhile to adjust and that you’re on a new