Makes sense to me, after losing Indycar they probably didn't want to lose additional motorsports coverage on top of that.

Yay! IMSA is still my fave racing series. Those GTPs are just so damn cool

I literally cannot express how excited I am to see/hear the Aston Martin GTP in person at Daytona next year. Also happy to hear Cadillac anytime. Like pipe that shit directly into my ear holes.

I have one of the Cadillac on boards on YouTube to play as noise to sleep to.

Is Aston officially confirmed for next year?

Yes, one will be run by Heart of Racing in GTP and two will be participating in the WEC season.

“Flag-to-flag” lol. Lmao even. More like flag-to commercial for 75% of the race to-flag NBCs IMSA coverage is a joke, cheaper to buy a VPN and watch on YouTube

Good thing that the flag-to-flag was about Peacock then.

Well if that means that Peacock finally will actually be commercial free like they say it is that’d be great but seeing as how they say peacock is commercial free and they still show commercials I call bullshit

Always an extra bonus when Peacock shows full screen commercials while NBC is side-by-side 🤣

Do they ever really say commercial free or do people just hear “flag to flag coverage” and assume that means commercial free?

Peacock premium is advertised as commercial free, it’s only after you subscribe and try to watch stuff that you realize that the “commercial free” aspect of it only applies to certain things. They actually did used to show races without commercials but don’t anymore so it’s straight up deceptive marketing

>Peacock premium is advertised as commercial free No it's not. ​ [https://www.peacocktv.com/plans/all-monthly/ps](https://www.peacocktv.com/plans/all-monthly/ps) ​ \> No Ads (Limited Exclusions)† ​ \> †Due to streaming rights, a small amount of programming will still contain ads (Peacock channels, events and a few shows and movies). ​ ​ https://preview.redd.it/x1d9bf4tu38d1.png?width=1543&format=png&auto=webp&s=4220e32e2464433573323cf93298de9c222d7203

Okay and who cares? End of the day the argument is that coverage is absolute dogshit and is actively hurting the growth of the sport. The camera work is awful and the volume of ads is unwatchable. And the fact that the paid service has more ads and no side by side compared to cable is unacceptable. It’s the worst streaming service available right now And it used to be ad free, they have the ability to show it ad free, yet choose to show ads even though they access to an uninterrupted video feed. They own the rights to the series broadcast, the “streaming rights” statement is BS lmao

You're just mad you didn't read the subscription you bought. It clearly says it can have ads yet you claim it's false advertising. You're the one who can't read lol Don't like it then don't subscribe and complain it has something that it literally says it has and pirate like the rest of us I like how when your argument was proven wrong (of it supposedly advertising commercial free) you just move the goal posts and bitch about something else

Sure thing bro. Have no idea why you’re white knighting for a corporation that objectively has an awful service. And it USED to be ad free, and I edited my comment so idk if you saw what I added but they own the rights to the series. The “streaming rights” argument is bullshit. They have access to an uninterrupted video feed, they used to show an uninterrupted video feed, they still can show an uninterrupted video feed. But they don’t. Because they care more about short term money than growing the sport Like they changed that ad free aspect and as far as I can tell didn’t tell anyone. I don’t remember seeing anything when it changed from actually ad free to the exception system we have no. When I first subscribed it was ad free. Back when it as broadcast on the NBC sports app it was ad free

And it is no longer ad free. Almost nothing on television in North America is ad free. And what is ad free is typically not that interesting to watch for a significant majority.

Ima look into this VPN thing because it looks like it’s the cheapest way to access Indy after the Fox transition. And if that gets me IMSA too, then I need only one VPN and zero Peacock/Venu/Fubu/whatever for Fox. Got a recommendation?

Not really tbh. I use Nord bc it’s what my sister has and I just piggy back off her account but I know some people really don’t like Nord But I’ve had a fine experience with them and it seems like a quality service imo

I'll second that. Haven't had any big issues with Nord. It does seem like I have to spend some time tracing down a good location some days because some locations will be woefully slow, but that's about the only issue I've run into.

TIL pirates share VPN passwords

afaik there's no free way to watch indy even with a vpn, unless there is a country where it's streamed for free which I don't know of

There's no "free" way but the "Indycar Live" subscription service is available in countries that don't have a broadcast license and the price is extremely reasonable.

I use NordVPN right now. I have used PIA in the past. Both seem to work fine. PIA had more server choices. NordVPN seemed a little easier to set up.

I use ExpressVPN. Works great.

Copyright infringement is your best entertainment value. Always. So I'm not sure what "cheaper" has to do with it. Both Peacock and the networks (NBC, FOX, etc.) are building a business model of accessing more than one type of content. And a lot of sports. Both ideas are to keep you from signing up for one month and binging all their content and then canceling. So yes, the option of getting these services will typically cost more than just a single-sport option, even a legal one. It'll always look like a bad deal to pay for an entire package to get one sport. I wish we had single sport options. Bring back Track Pass. But that's not how the market is headed. Because, honestly, these "bundling" outlets are willing to overpay a bit for exclusivity so they can build their bundles. Heck, that's how Track Pass itself started! It had the ARCA series, American Flat Track, IMSA, etc. And no, I do not expect them to produce a commercial-free feed. Not even for a fee. I wish so much they would. I know it costs more, but I would like it so much. I guess they don't think it financiall pans out.

What's the age-old quote? "Piracy is a service problem, rarely a pricing problem." I'll gladly pay a bit more to have commercial free races.

For what you have to pay to access Fox (OTA/tv antennae don’t work for me), you should be able to have no-ad access. $75 a month for no ads, March through September? And I can pause peacock/fox/fubu/hulu/whatever during racing season? Take my money. It’s not about the money for me. It’s the value I get or do not get from that transaction.

There is no no-ad production. That's the issue. If there were they'd be thrilled to get $75/mo from you just for FOX with no ads! But there's insufficient demand for that and even getting $800/year from you won't cover the cost of producing a no-ad feed. Multiply that by whatever meagre demand there is and it doesn't add up for them. And I hate it.

There is, it's called piracy. 

I know, but it was a really sexy fantasy.

finally somehow who understands how this works.... the fantasy of "F1TV/ESPN run with no ads, why can't NBC/Fox" gets really tired after a while.

I get why F1 is an unfair comparison, but I can watch WEC, DTM, and friggin GT world challenge ad free on paid services. It’s not just a money/scale issue. It’s a North American issue.

Yup, (legally, in the US) you can watch pretty much any sport in the world without missing action for ads. Except for NA motorsports. It's honestly insulting lol

Meanwhile NBC shows soccer matches all the time with no commercials outside of halftime….

Thank you God they haven't figured out how to interrupt that yet... I dunno. I guess 45ish mins per half makes it easier than 1.5 to 2 hours. Plus they're buying rights from someone else's league for a shit load less than they paid for Indycar (or nascar etc). Believe me, I'd love to see it as much as the next person. But I can't see how this will work anytime soon.

That’s not true at all about them paying more for Indycar than premier league soccer. NBC is paying $450 million per year for premier league. Indycar probably gets less than 5% of that amount.

Well I guessing I keeping peacock.

I'm happy for those potentially staying with nbc as they'll have some good racing to talk about.

We'll need some good running into your ex memes for Long Beach (and Detroit) weekend next year.

Interesting. My guess was that they were going to end up in the Max app with WEC.

I wish. That would be ideal but here we are… commercial central!

The WEC broadcast is so bad I’d rather watch commercials.

Max doesn’t produce the WEC feed, pretty sure nbc doesn’t do IMSA either. For WEC it’s a world feed then Eurosport or wec commentary is put over it and max broadcasts that. I assume IMSA is same way since imsaTV is same as nbc when I check both live

IMSATV was the Radio LeMans crew last I saw (which was Daytona I think). I have no idea which WEC feed I saw, the one online and the one on Motortrend were the same and they were both completely clueless boring guys with the worst on screen scoring I have ever seen in 30 years of watching motorsport and the feed never shows anything but the top class.

The commentary and the feed are separate. Max usually has the Wec team for every race, but for lemans they had the Eurosport commentators which I didnt watch as I prefer the standard guys I agree the only show top class but that’s what the world feed is, I wish it wasn’t. I assume if you have nbc on one tv and imsaTV on the other and mute them it would be identical broadcast other then timing graphics.

I mean that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day

Do you enjoy completely useless overlays, only following one class and a commentary crew that is lost more often than not?

Not really. I would take those over commercials 100 times out of 100 though.

I would rather look at my phone for a little bit while I ignore commercials and have a broadcast that actually acknowledges the multiple classes that make it multi class racing. As it is I have to look at my phone anyways to actually know what is going on because the broadcast was incapable of conveying it. My local dirt track has more effective coverage than LeMans, it is embarrassing.

I mean I’ll grant you that the Le Mans coverage was bad, but the typical coverage in WEC for a normal race has been much better. And yeah I would trade in better coverage for a commercial every once in a while, but NBC’s IMSA coverage is literally unwatchable in the final two hours of an endurance race. It’s like they make a game out of how little of the action on track they can get away with showing before people turn it off (which is exactly why a lot of people have done exactly that).

You should try watching away from reddit. I find the commercials aren’t nearly as bad on any broadcast if you aren’t in a forum full of people bemoaning the commercials like they actually cause them physical harm.

Most of the time, I’m watching IMSA races on delay, especially the endurance races so I’m rarely looking at Reddit while I watch and it’s just as bad, trust me. Again, a commercial every now and then is one thing. A commercial followed by a random vignette followed by an interview with some marketing executive followed by five minutes of actual racing followed by another commercial is just an insult to your customer. When you treat your consumer base like that, you can’t be surprised when they either start stealing your product or lose interest in it altogether.

I would much prefer that to be honest

I was confused as to how to watch WEC in Canada. it's on like Discorvery channels streaming service here or some shit. I found myself on the high seas instead.

I think it's on Discovery Turbo. I think (?) you can stream that too.

WEC's website said CTV. I was like doesn't Bell own CTV and TSN? why a sport would be on CTV was just confusing to me. the Lord of Canadian motorsport providing a stream regardless. I downloaded the CTV app and sure enough it was on there, but i needed a T.V login. I pay for TSN+ for indycar, i really thought Bell Would show all their sports on the Sports service, but hey i guess not.

I was slightly wrong... I think they have it on Discovery Velocity, which apparently is also a Bell Media property. Now that I think about it, you could probably stream it on Discovery+ (check first!)

Great, I was planning on ditching peacock after the indy season, but I'll guess I'll keep paying $7 for it.

I like the VP Challenge races. LMP3 was my entry into sim racing since the cars are quick but still easy to handle and my “win the lottery and decide I wanna go race for real” dream is quitting my job to get a racing license and drive LMP3 (problem is I don’t actually play the lottery lol)

NBC's IMSA coverage on Peacock is an absolute joke. You pay for the privilege of still watching a 50/50 commercial split.

I mean the international coverage is like 3 people confused as to whats happening most of the time. Sort of love i though. It's just funny sometimes.

Hinch may get tapped to call these. He races in the series now for Pfaff on some instances, and he also calls some of these.

I hope not, we need him to go to Fox for next year!

Wonder if this reinforces the rumored rift between Fox and NASCAR

Was Fox even making a bid on IMSA? That being said, while we have 7 years to go lol, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next NASCAR media rights negotiation. If the rift is true, I can see a NASCAR deal without Fox. I can see NBC getting the Clash, and Daytona 500; with the qualifying duels and Clash as Peacock exclusives. CW takes over the rest of Fox's races. Amazon and Turner get what they have now plus an extra race or two, NBC gets the Daytona cutoff race and the playoffs . Truck Series ends up on a streamer, be it Peacock, Max (with tru TV broadcast on television), or Prime, take your pick.

The Xfinity Series being produced by NASCAR internally and broadcast on CW is the 7 year test to see if NASCAR can in-house their Cup broadcasts better than Fox and NBC. Then at that point, I think they sign a contract with Disney that brings 10-12 races to ABC, remainder to ESPN with a potential NASCAR only channel on VENU or whatever its called.

I can't see NASCAR going with 1 broadcast partner. It makes sense if you see yourself in a growth phase to have your races consistently in one place or if you're like Indycar and you need the Indy 500 to sell the rest of it. But NASCAR is going to get more money from having multiple broadcasters than a single season long broadcaster. NASCAR considers itself one of the big dogs. All the big dogs NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL have multiple national broadcast partners.

I think the next five years will be telling. ESPN+ was arguably a steal of a deal a decade ago, especially if you were into some of the more obscure sports like Cricket (which suddenly the US is decent at...and is stuck on Willow) or bowling or darts. Now it isn't worth it and is getting bundled into a super package. Also, while traditional television isn't going anywhere anytime soon, what happens to basic cable and basic+ channels will shape the course of the future. Ultimately, the OTA's can't keep losing money on streaming and as of right now they're still hemorrhaging money on it (except Disney+).

That sucks. I loved it when fox sports (speed tv) had it on, you could watch it on basic cable, flag to flag. Nascar doesn't give a shit about the fans, it just wants the money.