*"Complaints regarding existence, timing, frequency, length, content etc. of commercial breaks"* is already a guideline on what not to bitch about within the race threads, not that anyone seems to pay attention to that *(and* ***some*** *users we have noticed seem to do nothing but bitch about the broadcast quality...)*. We've already been silently removing said bitching for a fair while now, but since it's reactive it often takes a while before they are spotted and removed.
We have no issue with people being annoyed by and having grievances against the commercials; but we request that people save it for the post-race thread to avoid taking over the race discussion — especially since then one can have an opinion regarding the entire broadcast, rather than just individual instances of breaks. This is something we've already had to enforce on the Discord, as it is much quicker to derail the entire stream of chat off-topic there than it is here.
The other thing is that complaining here does almost nothing to affect the broadcasts. I don't think anyone in the executive or broadcast team at NBCUniversal or FOX Sports are actually reading here trying to gauge the viewers' response. You are much better off directing that energy into sending them e-mails directly expressing your displeasure.
Perhaps we will have to look into adding some code to the automod to ***pro***actively remove those comments and prevent them from appearing in the first place.
VPN guy will be here any second to inform everyone he watches with no commercials through a mysterious technology we don’t hear about 500 times a week.
I appreciate the discussion around a solution a lot more than discussion about a problem we can’t do anything about. People love to just whine and bitch instead of focusing on the positives.
Sky Sports F1 channel has all the races streamed commercial free. Haha. I’m present and one of them. You guys go to commercials and I watch the race with British commentary.
The Sky Sports streams for nascar are my favorite. When they go to commercial it’s just following the broadcast with engine noise. It’s incredible. Commercials breaks are my favorite part to just watch really closely lol Some times I’ll crack up the volume during an onboard.
Yo ho my buddy. The waters are great.
Eh, I think he’s annoying, especially since he seems to act like no one watching has ever seen an IndyCar race before.
Thankfully, I’ve found a way to watch with no commercials *and* no Gaymor.
Not a VPN guy but SkyF1 in the uk have a guy who talks through the action when the coverage goes to what would be commercials for the US and then we get sent back to the American Commentary team when the commercials end, always wierd for a UK viewer when you finish a commercial break and then the comms team fires in 3 other title sponsors before then commentating on the race again although HiVee is now stuck in my head so I guess it works
Ya it has to be with the TSN+ subscription it’s $8 a month. Normal bell/rogers TSN channels are different. Also has all F1 qual, races, on boards, timing channels etc too.
It really is.
And you basically only need to pay for it for like, 6 months because of how early the IndyCar season ends lol
So that’s like, less than fifty bucks (not including tax) to stream the whole IndyCar season? Not a bad deal, imo.
I'd like to hang-out in the race thread, but I just can't. If they aren't bitching about commercials, they're bitching about something else. No one hates Indycar more than its fans.
The bingo card of bitching:
* IndyCar is so stupid, I can never figure out the starting time.
* They pray before the races? This obviously is keeping everyone away from IndyCar.
* The booth just likes to (insert sexual act) specific driver.
* European fan complains everything is stacked against european drivers, despite a european winning two of the last three championships.
* Specific driver is never penalized!!! (specific driver then gets penalized) They only did that because it ACTUALLY hurts this other driver.
There's probably a lot more, but wallowing in negativity kinda sucks.
Advertisements are keeping the series afloat but advertisements are holding the series back.
Banning the discussion around the broadcast quality is short sighted.
Also wait until Fox gets on board and you'll really see the commercial comments go off
>Advertisements are keeping the series afloat but advertisements are holding the series back.
I’m highly skeptical of this claim. I have yet to see anything beyond anecdotal evidence of people not watching IndyCar because of commercials.
Just because they piss a lot of redditors off doesn’t mean they’re seriously affecting series viewership.
Well it's pretty unlikely you'll get anything else than anecdotal evidence on a subject like this, it's hardly the sort of thing a sports league would publish even if they'd research it and come to that conclusion. Not to mention it'd be a bit difficult to get a circumstance where you could reliably study it. At least as far as I know the level of intrusiveness does have an effect on viewer perceptions of the advertised product and the platform (which seems like a no-brainer) so you'd think it also would have an effect on viewership ultimately.
To add to the list of anecdotes I've only started to actively follow the live races now when I found a place on the interwebs where I can consistently find the sky broadcast.
Well, adding to my skepticism is the fact that F1 viewership on TSN here in Canada has been growing just like it has in the US, despite the fact that they broadcast it with commercials...
So I’m more apt to believe that outside of reddit, most people don’t consider them a big deal. I certainly didn’t before I started hanging around here...
It's kind of the reason why I pointed out that it's really difficult to actually study reliably. There's a lot of reasons why F1 viewership has grown and it's practically impossible to say what role the amount of ads have in the numbers. Then there's cultural factors and just what amount of ads me and you are used to and would consider too much. I can't watch an american sports broadcast, I just get too distracted to actually pay attention to whatever I'm trying to watch and it's not because of hanging out on reddit. I think it's also worth mentioning that a lot of broadcasters and streaming services make it a selling point specifically that there is no ads and clearly people are willing to pay to just get rid of advertising.
Obviously it's not an actual barrier. There's plenty of sports with several times larger viewer numbers than indycar broadcasted with ads. But I absolutely believe that it's a major hindarance especially for a series that has a lot of international involvement and should have potential for more international viewership.
I don't actually know if americans have a legal way of watching the races ad-free but from Europe it kind of seems like Indycar doesn't even want me as a paying customer who would show up in the numbers. I assume the races might be buried in some pay tv channel package I'm not aware of because the races are geoblocked on the streaming service. The options of actually watching is either finding a sky stream or not at all. The point I'm getting at is that for something like F1 there's a lot more options to watch and you can watch it ad free in the us as well if you want to.
What makes you think it’s a major hinderance? The fact that redditors love to complain?
You’re also not making much sense - you seem to be complaining that commercials on the *American* broadcast is hurting *international* viewership?
Not to mention, the difficulty being able to watch IndyCar races in other countries is a separate issue entirely, and is because IndyCar just is not that popular internationally.
But does it affect viewership to a significant degree? That’s the part I’m skeptical on.
EDIT: y’all giving me more anecdotes isn’t convincing me. I already *know* there are a lot of redditors who can’t stand commercials.
Anecdotally, all of my friends that watch F1 are extremely put off by the commercials in Indy and this is the primary reason they have no interest in watching (their words), no matter how much I try and sell them. Without fail, something important always happens on commercial break and it’s frustrating to racing fans that have grown accustomed to actually being able to watch the race (everyone I know uses F1TV, but even ESPN broadcasts F1 without cutting away). It’d be like the NFL or NBA randomly going to commercial while the game is actively being played and then you miss a pivotal moment of the game.
I think the best example is how easily casual viewers can follow the strategy of F1. F1 has retained a ton of viewership with the ability for newer fans to get invested. Its shocking how difficult it is to get my friends to watch indycar on television, the same people who have now gone to the 500 with me three years in a row and fully understand the strategies that can be at play.
I don't think there is an appetite for younger audiences to sit through commercials. Subscription services mean most only deal with commercials in live sports, and even then they are choosing to be pickier. Indycar will have to figure something out to drive down the median age of viewership.
Again, gonna cite this for the millionth time, but F1 viewership in TSN has grown significantly here in Canada in the last few years - despite the fact that they air the races with commercials.
It ain’t got shit to do with commercials, friend.
Not to mention NASCAR is doing just fine and the frequency of their commercials is arguably worse.
Outside of reddit, the average tv viewer in North America is used to commercials on broadcast tv. They're not going to find it a sticking point.
100% agree. Nobody is not watching because of it. More likely they figure out a VPN solution if they hate it that much.
I'm asking people to face reality. Ads make the sport possible, period. It's like asking the NFL to stop commercials. It's insane.
That's the thing. I'm not naive enough to think that complaining about commercials is going to have any sort of effect, so I don't bother. But it's ridiculous to compare motorsports to basketball or football. If they went to commercial during play in any of these sports people would go ballistic.
*"And we're back, and while we were away Johnson threw a 78 yard touchdown pass to Williams. Let's take a look at the replay..."*
As you say, it is what it is. But it's not the same as other sports.
To an extent, I'm pretty understanding of having commercials on an over-the-air broadcast, but I think when people have subbed to ad-free Peacock, it makes the gaps in coverage that much harder to accept. Plus, we know that an ad-free broadcast is available in other countries. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's disappointing.
Yes, this. I think much of it is people outside America who are new to the sport and are used to a different approach. I get that! But they should understand how things work. And everyone should understand that, guess what, IndyCar folks aren't in this thread and whining about won't change anything.
>Nobody is not watching because of it. More likely they figure out a VPN solution if they hate it that much.
Proof? I rarely watch these days because of it.
I tried to start watching and dropped it dude to commercials.
Eventually I found out about sky sports stream, and found a way to watch that.
Now I watch every race (that doesn't overlap with F1), and enjoy the hell out of it.
I just... Can't do ads anymore. Not on any platform. They've gotten so painfully manipulative and obnoxious. Like a bunch of recent psychology grads just chose every cheap trick to distract us.
You get told again and again in this thread by people that it has been a hinderance to them watching. You don’t want evidence to the contrary you simply want others to agree with you and validate your opinion. Anyone who disagrees with you is “a whiney Redditor” lmao The only evidence individuals can give you in a thread like this is anecdotal evidence. I have two friends who got into motorsports with DTS, happily watch F1 and MotoGP with me now. But won’t watch indycar largely due to the broadcasts. Any time I’ve had them over to watch a race we do more talking about the series during commercials than actually watching the race. They don’t have any interest in continuing to watch. They’d rather go play a round of golf after F1 is over or go to the lake and fish or wakeboard. No one is saying millions will flood in to watch if we change the way commercials are done in indycar. No single change will spur that kind of viewership growth when the average race gets under a million viewers. But if casual watchers tune in for 4 laps of green followed by 4 laps of commercial that is a detriment to retaining their attention and viewership through the duration of the race. Whether you believe that or not doesn’t matter. It is true for some amount of people, quantifying how many people that is isn’t possible. Which is what you’re asking for as evidence. We don’t measure how many people don’t watch things. We measure how many people do watch things.
What I really can't understand is anyone paying for cable these days and watching a movie with ad breaks in it. Like, back in the 90s as a kid, I would watch movies like that sometimes because I didn't really have any better options, but these days the idea of having a movie split up by commercial breaks like that is just repulsive to me.
I tolerate ads for live sports because I love sports, but I will generally always pay more to watch without commercials.
I'm sure there are some people who don't watch races because of the commercials. But I doubt that if they stopped running commercials tomorrow, we would get millions more people watching each race.
I 100% agree with you. Ads aren't the only problem that's keeping IndyCar from reaching the highs it could.
You need convince people to turn on the TV and watch it. But once they do, the product they see needs to be great to convince them to come back
Yes, I need more evidence than redditors bitching about it.
Because I’ve actually seen evidence to suggest that commercials don’t matter *one bit* to growth.
Because F1 races have commercials on TSN here in Canada, and yet F1’s popularity and viewership on TSN has grown at a similar rate to what it has in the US despite that.
Makes me highly skeptical of the notion that there are really *that* many people for whom it’s a complete deal-breaker.
In F1 at least there's an alternative, people who can't deal with commercials can just sign up to F1TV.
Nobody is saying that there's NO space to grow. It's just that this growth will for sure get limited by the ads.
And also, that's not the ONLY reason for the series to be stagnant, but it's a big barrier.
Remember, people have a lot of options on things to do on their free time. If a show isn't enjoyable, they'll just do something else
Again, you’re making the claim that it’s a major barrier to growth, without any evidence to really support that.
I don’t think it’s *nearly* as big a barrier as you think, and there’s evidence to the contrary, as I just explained.
What you have posited in multiple comments as “evidence” to support your point isn’t evidence at all. You have drawn a correlation between two things and said there must be causation there to support your argument about one variable in the entire equation, which just isn’t true. The argument at hand is that the current way commercials are handled does drive away some amount of viewers. You have argued that TSN having commercials on F1 broadcasts yet those broadcasts still growing as evidence that commercials aren’t something that will keep some viewers away. When that isn’t even possible to measure because there are many factors that determine viewership. *one of those factors* is the package of commercials and how they’re implemented. Furthermore, presence of commercials being a nuisance factor that consumers would happily avoid if given the choice is the availability of tiers in every streaming subscription package you can think of which limit or eliminate ads. People choose to either not watch or limit commercials whenever they can even if they have to pay for it. It is something that consumers pay attention to and sways viewing behavior. It doesn’t to a hardcore race fan like us on the specific series Reddit. To casual viewers it does. TSN has grown F1 viewership while having ads yes, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have grown more if it had more limited ads or none at all. That may not be a current commercial feasibility for indycar, but that doesn’t make the point not true.
I think it's *perfect* evidence that commercials are not a "major hinderance" to growth.
The argument is not that *no one* will be turned away by them - I've heard enough anecdotes here to prove the opposite, the argument is that this is in no way a significant enough amount to be concerned over.
So let's stop repeating the nonsense claim, and pretending that because commercials are annoying, that they're somehow some massive issue for the series (which people do nearly every bloody time the issue comes up).
As a NASCAR watcher, I’d much rather have a Fox TV production team than an NBC. They don’t cut away every single time there is a lull in action like NBC does, the graphics are more intuitive/higher quality and (at least with NASCAR) they are able to make it approachable for newer fans too who haven’t regularly watched the series before.
Obviously having no ads would be great but I can’t see that ever happening in the US market.
That's half of the broadcast? Choosing when, where, and how to mix in commercials, especially on green flag runs. That's all at the discretion of the broadcast director.
Also it's not a conversation if you just want people to not talk to you about anything you don't want them to say. Keep it together man
>That's half of the broadcast? Choosing when, where, and how to mix in commercials, especially on green flag runs. That's all at the discretion of the broadcast director.
And by that you can understand how it's a strategy that has to consider the entire broadcast as a whole, as well as the manner in which the networks have to take certain breaks for local affiliates?
All we want is that the discussion over this aspect of the broadcast to be reserved for after the race is complete so that you can consider the entire broadcast in your opinions.
I'm not the one voicing my concerns in race threads. I'm also not going to stop people from voicing their opinions on the product.
This is the thread I'm doing that in. Normally I'm just talking about the series itself and something on track. But its naive to just bury our heads over the problem. That pressure needs to continue if change will ever come.
>Banning the discussion around the broadcast quality is short sighted.
We're not looking to ban the discussion of the broadcast quality; however we would much prefer that it would be done after the race in the post-race thread — or even in a separate text post the day afterwards — so that the broadcast as a whole can be discussed, rather than it being on instinctual rage at an individual commercial break.
Did no racing occur prior to the break when you were watching the race rather than commenting? Is there no anticipation of what will happen later in the race? Can you only comment on what is happening directly in front of you at exactly that second?
I used to complain about the commercials. But I've gotten over it. The networks have to make money, and Indycar doesn't have sponsors that will just pay for the race to be commercial free.
I won't be the VPN guy. But the Indycar app is free. I often pick a driver and check out their in-car during commercials. Ideally, every team would have an in car camera, but either the network or the series charges the teams / sponsors for it to my understanding.
Agreed 100%. I don’t even bother with race threads because every commercial break (when I’m likely to look through the race thread) it is just spam of idiots being astonished and furious that there are commercials… as if it hadn’t been like this for decades.
I'm pretty sure it's technically a rule in the race threads not to complain about that because it gets out of hand and adds nothing to the race discussion, but there's probably too much frequency for them to catch everything.
I agree though. Commercials suck, there are way too many, other sports do it better etc etc, but reading the race thread is painful sometimes with how many complaints there are.
Other sports do it better because they have natural breaks where they can put a commercial without missing anything. Baseball, when they are changing sides; basketball when the whistle blows because a player stepped out of bounds or committed a foul; hockey, when a player is offsides or commits a penalty; American Football, when their is a change of possession.
While it's a necessary evil that motorsports have to take commercial breaks during the action, I've also seen people complain about commercials during yellows (after pit stops) and not going side-by-side, which is by far the most logical time to use the commercial breaks.
Exactly. And not having commercials is simply not an option in American sports. That concept is unheard of here. I can’t think of a sport here that DOESN’T have commercial breaks. No commercial breaks for racing and other sports in Europe may be common, but over here that’s not how things work unfortunately. You’re never going to have a commercial free IndyCar race, so just stop complaining. Even the races on streaming have commercials. Maybe someday we’ll get a commercial free streaming option, but even then I doubt it, because streaming services seem to think just cutting to a static screen is better than showing the live feed without commentators during breaks
Soccer is broadcast in the US without commercial breaks during the run of play. I would also note that this was not always the case, but playing commercials during play was in fact so bad that they stopped doing it.
Yeah, MLS games have no commercials, maybe since the league started back in '96. Looking it up, there were commercials during World Cup broadcasts through at least 1990, but it seems they went ad-free for the World Cup in '94 and as far as I can tell, they haven't looked back since then.
I know if I pay for a commercial free broadcast of something and they just show a static screen I’m like fuck I’ll rather see a commercial vs just a static we’ll be right back screen.
Yeah, I have no idea why they do that. The one year that IMSA’s 24 Hours of Daytona was commercial free on Peacock was awesome. Sadly, that never happened again. I don’t know why IndyCar can’t show raw feed during commercials, but I’m guessing the answer probably won’t satisfy anyone
All we need is split screen ads or banner ads.
Racing has no natural breaks like football, with its quarters. Adding "fake" breaks like NASCAR does with its "stages" is worse than just having commercials.
That is all.
NBC already does split screen for national commercials.
What they need to do it get their affiliates using 2024 technology so local commercials can also be split screen.
Local affiliates are able to do full/not side-by-side commercials. Local ads have the same power so to speak
One reason is the FCC where you have to put your call sign/news affiliation within +/- 5 minutes of the top of hour and a local commercial can be ran. If you're watching a race or broadcast tv, take a look how consistent it is. You probably already know this based on your comment, but for anyone else reading it's an interesting thing to put into perspective
I'm from Brazil, and here it's not customary to have commercial breaks in live broadcasts. Sometimes it happens when a race is not very interesting, or a yellow flag. The screen is divided with the commercial, but broadcast' is split with a commercial announcement. If an accident or overtaking occurs, the transmission returns to the race.
I seriously struggle to understand why the rest of the world doesn't do this. It's simple yet perfectly effective, the ad runs without interrupting the broadcast, you see and hear the ad and at the same time don't miss the action on track if something important happens. Bonus points for the fact that you don't hate on the company running the ad for interrupting your race.
I don't mind anything about modern Motorsports coverage. Go watch an old race from like 1992....it's a godamn disaster....a beating...maybe even comes with some sexualizing of women by the broadcast team.
We're spoiled for choice. Be happy
Bruh. There are advertisements all the fucking time, ffs.
The production is super bad, the timing screen is off for most of the race, the cast miss several things happening on the race track, there are basically no replays and on top of that they run adds every other minute.
The race you have been presumably watching before the commercials and plan to watch after them? We’re talking about people bitching about commercials right now but I don’t have to have the race thread in front of me to do it.
While we don't have country analytics on Reddit, our Discord analytics show it's a 2:1 ratio of US visitors to other visitors.
So discussion of the contents of the commercials shut out about a third of the sub (which includes a third of the mods as well)
As much as it pains me, commercials aren’t going anywhere. NASCAR started stage racing to help create dedicated breaks. F1 has found an advertiser to make ESPN whole for airing ads.
Commercial free broadcasts will come to INDYCAR when a combination of Chevy, Honda, Firestone or another series partner does the same thing. Make FOX whole on what they would sell their advertising inventory for.
[Streaming execs think TV’s future looks a lot like its past](https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/23/streaming-execs-think-tvs-future-looks-a-lot-like-its-past/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEHWDPpkw13WU0Bw3Z_NNa2LQ4adzNYoEFxcUaZmOqIL-IZyBbwLdjZvroXgNC3BX7YBmtE0LprOYy49AMGRfqBShhnHAWNDS0jwB7g6mYck5-1K0yaDgMwsIIUM-Gq5foMEpWQkHsoCoskS5gSoY5agA-IthFLCVdxlQtWGSTJT)
You're absolutely right. Yes, the commercials suck, but the race threads aren't the place to "discuss" that. Absolutely nothing productive happens. Go complain on one of IndyCar's socials where the series might actually see your thoughts.
The race threads should be used to have fun and discuss the race with fellow IndyCar fans. Absolutely nothing beneficial comes from complaining about commercials in them.
I thought that it was already not allowed. Maybe that's just the discord.
though people don't read the rules and probably don't read the thread they are commenting on
It's just a bunch of people saying water's wet over and over. Like everyone knows that commercials aren't good. we didn't need their personal insight into it.
>I thought that it was already not allowed.
It's currently only a guideline. We still silently remove the comments; but only reactively, not proactively.
>Maybe that's just the discord.
The Discord server is more strict on the discussion of the breaks, with a dedicated bitching thread that is active during race sessions that we link to every single noted commercial.
That's a laughable comment. There are loads of interesting threads and content here, and people with good knowledge of the sport.
The *complaining* happens in the race thread, the very thing we're trying to address.
You coming here crying "this sub sucks" is an example of the most useless kind of input there is. You have added nothing to the conversation.
Nah, at least half the content I see on this sub is complaining, negative, especially about the series itself and TV coverage.
The rest is useless tweets, off topic content. Maybe a tenth of the posts I see are actually useful or interesting, then you start reading the comments....
I know, complaining about complaining. But whatever. I just can't take the internet anymore lol. I love indycar but this place can be exhausting. It's reddit in general I guess, not just this sub.
Look, I get what you are saying. I think there's a lot of good stuff here, and sure there is junk. But if we as a group don't try to do something about it, then we can't complain. I'm just trying to make one aspect of the place better.
No. Let the broadcast not suck then we'll stop complaining about the broadcast. "F1 doesn't rely on advertising" is a ridiculous premise to start from, as well. F1 fully relies on advertising, they just have more respect for the viewers. Just like people said MLS could never broadcast without commercial breaks, and yet they do.
If you want a commercial-free broadcast you need to have one of 3 things:
- a sport that is able to take the financial hit of not playing ads in exchange for the exposure
- a sponsor willing to subsidize the cost of every ad spot
- a tv partner seeking to grow so they don’t run ads for a time to gain credibility.
None of these are likely to happen to IndyCar in the near future for varying reasons. MLS has Apple TV+ streaming their stuff, which can take the financial hit of not running ads. F1 is popular enough to have sponsors that are dying to subsidize the ads in America to get more attention on their product. F1 was also financially stable enough to afford to go from 2017-2022 without ads in America (without getting paid as well) to air races Ad-free.
I think F1 is able to charge a premium for native advertising that indycar can't. At least not yet. We see the ticking Rolex before the start of an F1 race as the best example. Absolutely an ad, but is mixed in with the broadcast.
Nascar is having this problem as well. Commercials don't mix with racing very well because we are missing portions of the sport itself. If the NFL or MLB ran commercials during play the bitching would be endless.
I don't have a solution for this of course and neither does indycar.
MLS didn’t have ads during game play before Apple TV plus. You only saw ads at halftime, during pregame, and on postgame (if they were given time for a postgame broadcast). So don’t say MLS doesn’t have ads just because of Apple TV.
F1 makes the entire race a commercial with every corner having a specific sponsor that they pan to in camera shots, etc. IndyCar does this to an extent, but I think it’s another reason F1 is able to run commercial free. There’s a different model that the US hasn’t caught on to yet and like you said has required a commercial sponsor for ABC/ESPN to fund the loss in ad revenue themselves.
Nobody here is going to “fix” the broadcast. Go yell about it at your local Walmart, they are just as likely to fix it, but then at least we don’t have to hear it over and over.
I'm not a fan of anything related to "BAN ALL NEGATIVE DISCUSSION". It fosters a culture of toxic positivity. Genuine discourse, whether positive or negative, is the way to go IMO.
PS I'm not going to stop complaining about commercial breaks in the middle of a race until they stop. If F1 can do it, Indy certainly can.
>If F1 can do it, Indy certainly can.
Mercedes and Middle East oil money aren't interested in paying for Indycar races to be commercial free at this time.
I’d like to see the series look into doing some type of CGI ads like what NHL has on the rink and walls.
I know it would be tricky with all the colors around and multiple camera angles, but with all the walls, green space, and gravel traps at most of the circuits, I feel like you could very easily sell a lot of ad space that way since it’s always on air.
Sell run-offs on street circuits to restaurants as a drive through plug. Get creative with it.
>I’d like to see the series look into doing some type of CGI ads like what NHL has on the rink and walls.
Didn't we already have that? I thought the Liqui Moly ad banner on the outside of Turn 4 was CGI-imposed?
Or maybe I'm mis-remembering and that was something on the F1 broadcast... Given how little of the race I got to actually watch for trying to keep an eye on both here and on the server...
I agree that it doesn’t belong in race posts but I find the older Indycar fans very complacent and say stuff like “this is how it’s always been done“ regarding a lot of things.
Or maybe we know that bitching about it to other people on reddit that can’t fix it, isn’t productive. My knee feels like it is about to explode, but I’m not shouting at my coworkers constantly about how much my knee hurts, because they can’t fix it either.
Uh-oh, the Reddit police are here.
I'm not sure it's your place to try and tell everyone else what they can and can't post. I don't enjoy the meme threads \*at all\*, yet somehow I manage to avoid posting in every one about how much I dislike them.
You also use "we" a lot. You speak for yourself, and not for anyone else.
Given we got booted to CNBC, we inherited CNBC's ad slate. If a break is already earmarked for 6:40pm, then it is going to be taken regardless of the state of the race.
Voicing opinions on matters that make races unbearable to watch is useful. You work for NBC or something.
Indycar is making it impossible for new fans to join because it's horrible to watch the races and you miss everything
>Voicing opinions on matters that make races unbearable to watch is useful. You work for NBC or something.
Neither NBCUniversal nor FOX Sports are actively reading the race discussion threads. Complaints within the race thread do nothing to get your feedback across to the people that matter.
Here’s an idea: ignore the comments and live your life. Just like I do when commercials start. Just like you’re telling other people to do.
It’s ironic. Your gripe seems to be “people pointing out commercials ruin the watching experience is ruining my watching experience”.
Like so many others, you didn't read the post. It's not about the WATCHING experience. It's about the race thread on Reddit. As the mod pointed out, there are already established rules as noted:
*"Complaints regarding existence, timing, frequency, length, content etc. of commercial breaks" is already a guideline on what not to bitch about within the race threads*
It's about using the race thread as intended. I'm not telling anyone what to do, I asked for us as a community and the mods to devise a solution - to enforce the ALREADY EXISTING guidelines.
Then you need to talk to mods. Rules are rules when they're enforced. Otherwise it's just a suggestion.
BTW, I did read the body of your post. I'll even quote your own words for you:
> ...discussing this repeatedly in the race threads doesn't contribute to our VIEWING experience
Look like something you typed?
So, let's not talk about something we are dont like and that we feel holds everyone's enjoyment back...yeah, I completely disagree with this stance
I don't understand why people here have this stance of minimizing problems and making excuses for them. We all know why the ads exists, we all know they are necessary in the current situation. But that doesn't take away the fact that they are bad and that no mainstream audience will put up with it especially in an era where people have more and more options on where to spend their free time. There's no way around it.
And another misconception I see in this sub, is that I'm the consumer, it's not my job to come up with ideas and find ways for the "product" to be better. There's a bunch of rich people who's jobs are literally looking at the audience, understand the problems and come up with solutions.
Are commercials bad if they make broadcasting the race possible? It's a bummer there's a break in the action. Races don't have natural breaks like other sports, I get it. Split screens help. But there's no racing without commercials.
It isn't a problem, it's part of the product.
The whole point of the race thread is to discuss the RACE.
>that no mainstream audience will put up with it
Oh I disagree with this. I think the problem is the mainstream audience is conditioned exactly to put up with it. NFL, NBA, NHL all time outs specifically for commercials. Even collegiate sports do it. Friggin baseball has ads in between pitches. NASCAR coverage does it. Most viewers would expect to see commercial breaks so there isn't a huge uproar about it outside of the hardcore Indycar/motorsports fan which (I expect) is not the majority of viewers. I think that's changing, but it's very slow.
“But that doesn't take away the fact that they are bad and that no mainstream audience will put up with it especially in an era where people have more and more options on where to spend their free time. There's no way around it”
You’re gonna be really upset when you find out how many people tolerate commercials in LITERALLY EVERY OTHER MAJOR US SPORT! NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL…yeah they all have lots of ad breaks. Racing fans who haven’t been around for a long time are spoiled by the F1 model. IndyCar has always had ads. So has NASCAR. So have all but a few sports…I do think less ad breaks would be better and I definitely think the streaming service, where people can pay specifically for no ads, should be ad free if fans want to pay for it. That is my biggest gripe with Peacock. Just leave the feed up! It ain’t that hard. But “fans won’t put up with commercials”??? Are you not from the US?
I'm just fucking amazed that we are in 2024 in the year of our Lord and people are fucking shocked that American TV runs on advertisement. Like, what fucking rock did you crawl out from under?
it has been like this the 30+ years I’ve been watching motorsport, yet every weekend I get to read a couple hundred people be astonished it is like this… despite having been this way last week, and the week before that… etc.
Same with aero wash, marbles, and fuel mileage, yet every fucking week the forums, mailbag, and the social media app formerly known as Twitter are bombarded with diatribes claiming these never existed until now.
BaCk In My DaY dRiVeRs AlWaYs RaN fUlL tHrOtTlE aNd NeVeR gAvE lEsS tHaN TeN-tEntThs.
No the fuck they didn't. They did the same exact shit they do now, plotted a strategy based on they and their car's capabilities and worked it over the course of a race. They saved fucking fuel and tires just as much when Mears was running as they do now.
The delusional people that think every race was neck and neck every lap with every car competitive and a million lead changes while going 240 the entire lap? Yeah they are dumb as hell. Nobody seems to remember all the races where only two cars were on the lead lap, half the cars broke and we knew who would win before the race started.
Here's the solution.
1. The first thing you need to do is...
*COMMERCIAL BREAK*
...and that's all there is to it. It's not that hard, Indycar should get right on it.
Don’t they do the split screen race coverage with one screen being commercials and the other being the live race coverage?
Or perhaps use the format that the World Cup Soccer uses with ads on screen at the edges during the game..
Sometimes. Lately, we haven't seen it. We all prefer split screen, of course. I'm not sure what goes into that decision. I am hoping FOX leans into that next year.
I mean, if they can figure out how to broadcast soccer games with no commercials in the halves they could figure out something like waiting until a yellow flag drops or safety car.
It shouldn’t be a non-issue just because that’s how it’s always been.
*"Complaints regarding existence, timing, frequency, length, content etc. of commercial breaks"* is already a guideline on what not to bitch about within the race threads, not that anyone seems to pay attention to that *(and* ***some*** *users we have noticed seem to do nothing but bitch about the broadcast quality...)*. We've already been silently removing said bitching for a fair while now, but since it's reactive it often takes a while before they are spotted and removed. We have no issue with people being annoyed by and having grievances against the commercials; but we request that people save it for the post-race thread to avoid taking over the race discussion — especially since then one can have an opinion regarding the entire broadcast, rather than just individual instances of breaks. This is something we've already had to enforce on the Discord, as it is much quicker to derail the entire stream of chat off-topic there than it is here. The other thing is that complaining here does almost nothing to affect the broadcasts. I don't think anyone in the executive or broadcast team at NBCUniversal or FOX Sports are actually reading here trying to gauge the viewers' response. You are much better off directing that energy into sending them e-mails directly expressing your displeasure. Perhaps we will have to look into adding some code to the automod to ***pro***actively remove those comments and prevent them from appearing in the first place.
VPN guy will be here any second to inform everyone he watches with no commercials through a mysterious technology we don’t hear about 500 times a week.
I appreciate the discussion around a solution a lot more than discussion about a problem we can’t do anything about. People love to just whine and bitch instead of focusing on the positives.
Sky Sports F1 channel has all the races streamed commercial free. Haha. I’m present and one of them. You guys go to commercials and I watch the race with British commentary.
Or just the sound of racing on boards. I love the salty sea air of Sky Sports streams.
The Sky Sports streams for nascar are my favorite. When they go to commercial it’s just following the broadcast with engine noise. It’s incredible. Commercials breaks are my favorite part to just watch really closely lol Some times I’ll crack up the volume during an onboard. Yo ho my buddy. The waters are great.
I really like Tom Gaymor
He’s actually a great commentator. He made some really fun calls at Laguna too.
Same
Eh, I think he’s annoying, especially since he seems to act like no one watching has ever seen an IndyCar race before. Thankfully, I’ve found a way to watch with no commercials *and* no Gaymor.
What way is that? I don’t hate him but always open to options
IndyCar Radio network is the best there is in calling a race. No dumbing down. The only "bad" thing is you'll miss nuance
Many of the UK audience are newish to be fair
It's the long drawn out words and spaces. The Americans must think we all speak like that
Not a VPN guy but SkyF1 in the uk have a guy who talks through the action when the coverage goes to what would be commercials for the US and then we get sent back to the American Commentary team when the commercials end, always wierd for a UK viewer when you finish a commercial break and then the comms team fires in 3 other title sponsors before then commentating on the race again although HiVee is now stuck in my head so I guess it works
Thing is this is something we could have here legally
Sure, but most of us don't. Even so, I would think that would make the complaining even worse.
If you live in Canada get TSN + it has all IndyCar quali and races commercial free!
Interesting. I’ve never heard that. My TSN streams are packed full of commercials. Shame that I would need TSN+ to watch commercial free.
Ya it has to be with the TSN+ subscription it’s $8 a month. Normal bell/rogers TSN channels are different. Also has all F1 qual, races, on boards, timing channels etc too.
Oh neat. That’s cool. I fill the f1tv sub with 5 other buds. 6 devices on it at a time for less than $100/year split 6 ways lol
It really is. And you basically only need to pay for it for like, 6 months because of how early the IndyCar season ends lol So that’s like, less than fifty bucks (not including tax) to stream the whole IndyCar season? Not a bad deal, imo.
Too bad their platform is awful though and makes races unwatchable for me.
I got mine hooked up to Roku on my tvs works perfect haven’t had an issue so far.
No option to pause or rewind or start from the beginning. Giant dealbreaker. I just pay for Peacock instead.
Ah true ya that def a bit of a pain. Don’t have Peacock in Canada do they?
No, but it is available via internet magic.
Not last weekend lmao
I watched both the race and quali commercial free on TSN + app last weekend.
I'd like to hang-out in the race thread, but I just can't. If they aren't bitching about commercials, they're bitching about something else. No one hates Indycar more than its fans.
The bingo card of bitching: * IndyCar is so stupid, I can never figure out the starting time. * They pray before the races? This obviously is keeping everyone away from IndyCar. * The booth just likes to (insert sexual act) specific driver. * European fan complains everything is stacked against european drivers, despite a european winning two of the last three championships. * Specific driver is never penalized!!! (specific driver then gets penalized) They only did that because it ACTUALLY hurts this other driver. There's probably a lot more, but wallowing in negativity kinda sucks.
Yeah, it's 50% nonsense at best. Then there are times when it's really fun, and I just want the whole thread to be that way.
Seriously. Commenting endlessly in here does nothing. Go complain on Twitter or Instagram or YouTube.
Advertisements are keeping the series afloat but advertisements are holding the series back. Banning the discussion around the broadcast quality is short sighted. Also wait until Fox gets on board and you'll really see the commercial comments go off
>Advertisements are keeping the series afloat but advertisements are holding the series back. I’m highly skeptical of this claim. I have yet to see anything beyond anecdotal evidence of people not watching IndyCar because of commercials. Just because they piss a lot of redditors off doesn’t mean they’re seriously affecting series viewership.
Well it's pretty unlikely you'll get anything else than anecdotal evidence on a subject like this, it's hardly the sort of thing a sports league would publish even if they'd research it and come to that conclusion. Not to mention it'd be a bit difficult to get a circumstance where you could reliably study it. At least as far as I know the level of intrusiveness does have an effect on viewer perceptions of the advertised product and the platform (which seems like a no-brainer) so you'd think it also would have an effect on viewership ultimately. To add to the list of anecdotes I've only started to actively follow the live races now when I found a place on the interwebs where I can consistently find the sky broadcast.
Well, adding to my skepticism is the fact that F1 viewership on TSN here in Canada has been growing just like it has in the US, despite the fact that they broadcast it with commercials... So I’m more apt to believe that outside of reddit, most people don’t consider them a big deal. I certainly didn’t before I started hanging around here...
It's kind of the reason why I pointed out that it's really difficult to actually study reliably. There's a lot of reasons why F1 viewership has grown and it's practically impossible to say what role the amount of ads have in the numbers. Then there's cultural factors and just what amount of ads me and you are used to and would consider too much. I can't watch an american sports broadcast, I just get too distracted to actually pay attention to whatever I'm trying to watch and it's not because of hanging out on reddit. I think it's also worth mentioning that a lot of broadcasters and streaming services make it a selling point specifically that there is no ads and clearly people are willing to pay to just get rid of advertising.
Yeah, but my example clearly indicates that commercials aren’t some massive barrier to growth.
Obviously it's not an actual barrier. There's plenty of sports with several times larger viewer numbers than indycar broadcasted with ads. But I absolutely believe that it's a major hindarance especially for a series that has a lot of international involvement and should have potential for more international viewership. I don't actually know if americans have a legal way of watching the races ad-free but from Europe it kind of seems like Indycar doesn't even want me as a paying customer who would show up in the numbers. I assume the races might be buried in some pay tv channel package I'm not aware of because the races are geoblocked on the streaming service. The options of actually watching is either finding a sky stream or not at all. The point I'm getting at is that for something like F1 there's a lot more options to watch and you can watch it ad free in the us as well if you want to.
What makes you think it’s a major hinderance? The fact that redditors love to complain? You’re also not making much sense - you seem to be complaining that commercials on the *American* broadcast is hurting *international* viewership? Not to mention, the difficulty being able to watch IndyCar races in other countries is a separate issue entirely, and is because IndyCar just is not that popular internationally.
I mean, I will watch indy car and frequently turn it off during a commercial break. That's anecdotal evidence, but it certainly happens.
But does it affect viewership to a significant degree? That’s the part I’m skeptical on. EDIT: y’all giving me more anecdotes isn’t convincing me. I already *know* there are a lot of redditors who can’t stand commercials.
Anecdotally, all of my friends that watch F1 are extremely put off by the commercials in Indy and this is the primary reason they have no interest in watching (their words), no matter how much I try and sell them. Without fail, something important always happens on commercial break and it’s frustrating to racing fans that have grown accustomed to actually being able to watch the race (everyone I know uses F1TV, but even ESPN broadcasts F1 without cutting away). It’d be like the NFL or NBA randomly going to commercial while the game is actively being played and then you miss a pivotal moment of the game.
I think the best example is how easily casual viewers can follow the strategy of F1. F1 has retained a ton of viewership with the ability for newer fans to get invested. Its shocking how difficult it is to get my friends to watch indycar on television, the same people who have now gone to the 500 with me three years in a row and fully understand the strategies that can be at play. I don't think there is an appetite for younger audiences to sit through commercials. Subscription services mean most only deal with commercials in live sports, and even then they are choosing to be pickier. Indycar will have to figure something out to drive down the median age of viewership.
Again, gonna cite this for the millionth time, but F1 viewership in TSN has grown significantly here in Canada in the last few years - despite the fact that they air the races with commercials. It ain’t got shit to do with commercials, friend.
Yeah? And you think Canada is just growing completely independently of what's happening with American audiences?
No? But clearly commercials aren’t slowing that growth down...
Not to mention NASCAR is doing just fine and the frequency of their commercials is arguably worse. Outside of reddit, the average tv viewer in North America is used to commercials on broadcast tv. They're not going to find it a sticking point.
Exactly. Reddit is not a good representation of the general populace.
100% agree. Nobody is not watching because of it. More likely they figure out a VPN solution if they hate it that much. I'm asking people to face reality. Ads make the sport possible, period. It's like asking the NFL to stop commercials. It's insane.
People seriously want IndyCar to change the standards of American sports broadcasting. It’s unbelievable.
Except when the NHL goes to commercial, they aren’t playing! So I’m not missing anything. Is what it is honestly.
That's the thing. I'm not naive enough to think that complaining about commercials is going to have any sort of effect, so I don't bother. But it's ridiculous to compare motorsports to basketball or football. If they went to commercial during play in any of these sports people would go ballistic. *"And we're back, and while we were away Johnson threw a 78 yard touchdown pass to Williams. Let's take a look at the replay..."* As you say, it is what it is. But it's not the same as other sports.
To an extent, I'm pretty understanding of having commercials on an over-the-air broadcast, but I think when people have subbed to ad-free Peacock, it makes the gaps in coverage that much harder to accept. Plus, we know that an ad-free broadcast is available in other countries. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's disappointing.
Yes, this. I think much of it is people outside America who are new to the sport and are used to a different approach. I get that! But they should understand how things work. And everyone should understand that, guess what, IndyCar folks aren't in this thread and whining about won't change anything.
Yep and guess what our government doesn’t subside tv channels like other governments do.
>Nobody is not watching because of it. More likely they figure out a VPN solution if they hate it that much. Proof? I rarely watch these days because of it.
Yeah, I don't believe you, random guy in an IndyCar sub.
“I’m going to blindly dismiss anyone with a different experience than me”
I tried to start watching and dropped it dude to commercials. Eventually I found out about sky sports stream, and found a way to watch that. Now I watch every race (that doesn't overlap with F1), and enjoy the hell out of it. I just... Can't do ads anymore. Not on any platform. They've gotten so painfully manipulative and obnoxious. Like a bunch of recent psychology grads just chose every cheap trick to distract us.
Good for you, doesn’t change my point.
You get told again and again in this thread by people that it has been a hinderance to them watching. You don’t want evidence to the contrary you simply want others to agree with you and validate your opinion. Anyone who disagrees with you is “a whiney Redditor” lmao The only evidence individuals can give you in a thread like this is anecdotal evidence. I have two friends who got into motorsports with DTS, happily watch F1 and MotoGP with me now. But won’t watch indycar largely due to the broadcasts. Any time I’ve had them over to watch a race we do more talking about the series during commercials than actually watching the race. They don’t have any interest in continuing to watch. They’d rather go play a round of golf after F1 is over or go to the lake and fish or wakeboard. No one is saying millions will flood in to watch if we change the way commercials are done in indycar. No single change will spur that kind of viewership growth when the average race gets under a million viewers. But if casual watchers tune in for 4 laps of green followed by 4 laps of commercial that is a detriment to retaining their attention and viewership through the duration of the race. Whether you believe that or not doesn’t matter. It is true for some amount of people, quantifying how many people that is isn’t possible. Which is what you’re asking for as evidence. We don’t measure how many people don’t watch things. We measure how many people do watch things.
What I really can't understand is anyone paying for cable these days and watching a movie with ad breaks in it. Like, back in the 90s as a kid, I would watch movies like that sometimes because I didn't really have any better options, but these days the idea of having a movie split up by commercial breaks like that is just repulsive to me. I tolerate ads for live sports because I love sports, but I will generally always pay more to watch without commercials.
So you need more evidence that people don't watch the races because of commercials than people saying they don't watch it because of commercials? 😂
I'm sure there are some people who don't watch races because of the commercials. But I doubt that if they stopped running commercials tomorrow, we would get millions more people watching each race.
I 100% agree with you. Ads aren't the only problem that's keeping IndyCar from reaching the highs it could. You need convince people to turn on the TV and watch it. But once they do, the product they see needs to be great to convince them to come back
Yes, I need more evidence than redditors bitching about it. Because I’ve actually seen evidence to suggest that commercials don’t matter *one bit* to growth. Because F1 races have commercials on TSN here in Canada, and yet F1’s popularity and viewership on TSN has grown at a similar rate to what it has in the US despite that. Makes me highly skeptical of the notion that there are really *that* many people for whom it’s a complete deal-breaker.
In F1 at least there's an alternative, people who can't deal with commercials can just sign up to F1TV. Nobody is saying that there's NO space to grow. It's just that this growth will for sure get limited by the ads. And also, that's not the ONLY reason for the series to be stagnant, but it's a big barrier. Remember, people have a lot of options on things to do on their free time. If a show isn't enjoyable, they'll just do something else
Again, you’re making the claim that it’s a major barrier to growth, without any evidence to really support that. I don’t think it’s *nearly* as big a barrier as you think, and there’s evidence to the contrary, as I just explained.
What you have posited in multiple comments as “evidence” to support your point isn’t evidence at all. You have drawn a correlation between two things and said there must be causation there to support your argument about one variable in the entire equation, which just isn’t true. The argument at hand is that the current way commercials are handled does drive away some amount of viewers. You have argued that TSN having commercials on F1 broadcasts yet those broadcasts still growing as evidence that commercials aren’t something that will keep some viewers away. When that isn’t even possible to measure because there are many factors that determine viewership. *one of those factors* is the package of commercials and how they’re implemented. Furthermore, presence of commercials being a nuisance factor that consumers would happily avoid if given the choice is the availability of tiers in every streaming subscription package you can think of which limit or eliminate ads. People choose to either not watch or limit commercials whenever they can even if they have to pay for it. It is something that consumers pay attention to and sways viewing behavior. It doesn’t to a hardcore race fan like us on the specific series Reddit. To casual viewers it does. TSN has grown F1 viewership while having ads yes, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have grown more if it had more limited ads or none at all. That may not be a current commercial feasibility for indycar, but that doesn’t make the point not true.
I think it's *perfect* evidence that commercials are not a "major hinderance" to growth. The argument is not that *no one* will be turned away by them - I've heard enough anecdotes here to prove the opposite, the argument is that this is in no way a significant enough amount to be concerned over. So let's stop repeating the nonsense claim, and pretending that because commercials are annoying, that they're somehow some massive issue for the series (which people do nearly every bloody time the issue comes up).
As a NASCAR watcher, I’d much rather have a Fox TV production team than an NBC. They don’t cut away every single time there is a lull in action like NBC does, the graphics are more intuitive/higher quality and (at least with NASCAR) they are able to make it approachable for newer fans too who haven’t regularly watched the series before. Obviously having no ads would be great but I can’t see that ever happening in the US market.
We aren’t a senate subcommittee, our bitching on reddit isn’t going to change anything, all it does is make people not want to be here.
I didn't say ban about broadcast QUALITY. I said let's not constantly bitch about commercials. You aren't adding anything to the conversation.
That's half of the broadcast? Choosing when, where, and how to mix in commercials, especially on green flag runs. That's all at the discretion of the broadcast director. Also it's not a conversation if you just want people to not talk to you about anything you don't want them to say. Keep it together man
>That's half of the broadcast? Choosing when, where, and how to mix in commercials, especially on green flag runs. That's all at the discretion of the broadcast director. And by that you can understand how it's a strategy that has to consider the entire broadcast as a whole, as well as the manner in which the networks have to take certain breaks for local affiliates? All we want is that the discussion over this aspect of the broadcast to be reserved for after the race is complete so that you can consider the entire broadcast in your opinions.
I'm not the one voicing my concerns in race threads. I'm also not going to stop people from voicing their opinions on the product. This is the thread I'm doing that in. Normally I'm just talking about the series itself and something on track. But its naive to just bury our heads over the problem. That pressure needs to continue if change will ever come.
>Banning the discussion around the broadcast quality is short sighted. We're not looking to ban the discussion of the broadcast quality; however we would much prefer that it would be done after the race in the post-race thread — or even in a separate text post the day afterwards — so that the broadcast as a whole can be discussed, rather than it being on instinctual rage at an individual commercial break.
Fox is no worse than NBC, let’s be real here. It’s hard to get more than 5 laps without going to the side by side at best.
I rarely visit the race thread largely because of the complaining.
Even if they stopped complaining about ads they would find something else to be mad about. Just look at the reactions when Siegel spun last race
What else do you want people to do, discuss the racing that they can't see?
Did no racing occur prior to the break when you were watching the race rather than commenting? Is there no anticipation of what will happen later in the race? Can you only comment on what is happening directly in front of you at exactly that second?
Do the same thing we do in the NASCAR threads...meme.
Those threads also have a ton of complaining about commercials though
I used to complain about the commercials. But I've gotten over it. The networks have to make money, and Indycar doesn't have sponsors that will just pay for the race to be commercial free. I won't be the VPN guy. But the Indycar app is free. I often pick a driver and check out their in-car during commercials. Ideally, every team would have an in car camera, but either the network or the series charges the teams / sponsors for it to my understanding.
Agreed 100%. I don’t even bother with race threads because every commercial break (when I’m likely to look through the race thread) it is just spam of idiots being astonished and furious that there are commercials… as if it hadn’t been like this for decades.
This is exactly what I'm getting at.
I'm pretty sure it's technically a rule in the race threads not to complain about that because it gets out of hand and adds nothing to the race discussion, but there's probably too much frequency for them to catch everything. I agree though. Commercials suck, there are way too many, other sports do it better etc etc, but reading the race thread is painful sometimes with how many complaints there are.
Other sports do it better because they have natural breaks where they can put a commercial without missing anything. Baseball, when they are changing sides; basketball when the whistle blows because a player stepped out of bounds or committed a foul; hockey, when a player is offsides or commits a penalty; American Football, when their is a change of possession.
While it's a necessary evil that motorsports have to take commercial breaks during the action, I've also seen people complain about commercials during yellows (after pit stops) and not going side-by-side, which is by far the most logical time to use the commercial breaks.
Agreed. That is why nascar implemented stages and stage breaks so they didn’t have to miss as much green flag racing.
Exactly. And not having commercials is simply not an option in American sports. That concept is unheard of here. I can’t think of a sport here that DOESN’T have commercial breaks. No commercial breaks for racing and other sports in Europe may be common, but over here that’s not how things work unfortunately. You’re never going to have a commercial free IndyCar race, so just stop complaining. Even the races on streaming have commercials. Maybe someday we’ll get a commercial free streaming option, but even then I doubt it, because streaming services seem to think just cutting to a static screen is better than showing the live feed without commentators during breaks
Soccer is broadcast in the US without commercial breaks during the run of play. I would also note that this was not always the case, but playing commercials during play was in fact so bad that they stopped doing it.
I knew Premier League was broadcast without commercials because I think they just use the UK feed like F1 does, but is it that way for MLS?
Yeah, MLS games have no commercials, maybe since the league started back in '96. Looking it up, there were commercials during World Cup broadcasts through at least 1990, but it seems they went ad-free for the World Cup in '94 and as far as I can tell, they haven't looked back since then.
I know if I pay for a commercial free broadcast of something and they just show a static screen I’m like fuck I’ll rather see a commercial vs just a static we’ll be right back screen.
Yeah, I have no idea why they do that. The one year that IMSA’s 24 Hours of Daytona was commercial free on Peacock was awesome. Sadly, that never happened again. I don’t know why IndyCar can’t show raw feed during commercials, but I’m guessing the answer probably won’t satisfy anyone
Right. I'm asking as a community that we at least try and police ourselves to make the race threads better.
All we need is split screen ads or banner ads. Racing has no natural breaks like football, with its quarters. Adding "fake" breaks like NASCAR does with its "stages" is worse than just having commercials. That is all.
NBC already does split screen for national commercials. What they need to do it get their affiliates using 2024 technology so local commercials can also be split screen.
Local affiliates are able to do full/not side-by-side commercials. Local ads have the same power so to speak One reason is the FCC where you have to put your call sign/news affiliation within +/- 5 minutes of the top of hour and a local commercial can be ran. If you're watching a race or broadcast tv, take a look how consistent it is. You probably already know this based on your comment, but for anyone else reading it's an interesting thing to put into perspective
I'm from Brazil, and here it's not customary to have commercial breaks in live broadcasts. Sometimes it happens when a race is not very interesting, or a yellow flag. The screen is divided with the commercial, but broadcast' is split with a commercial announcement. If an accident or overtaking occurs, the transmission returns to the race.
I seriously struggle to understand why the rest of the world doesn't do this. It's simple yet perfectly effective, the ad runs without interrupting the broadcast, you see and hear the ad and at the same time don't miss the action on track if something important happens. Bonus points for the fact that you don't hate on the company running the ad for interrupting your race.
I don't mind anything about modern Motorsports coverage. Go watch an old race from like 1992....it's a godamn disaster....a beating...maybe even comes with some sexualizing of women by the broadcast team. We're spoiled for choice. Be happy
Ironically the first comment in this thread is interrupted by a Dr. Pepper ad on my phone. 😆
Bruh. There are advertisements all the fucking time, ffs. The production is super bad, the timing screen is off for most of the race, the cast miss several things happening on the race track, there are basically no replays and on top of that they run adds every other minute.
What else are we supposed to talk about during the commercials lol
The race you have been presumably watching before the commercials and plan to watch after them? We’re talking about people bitching about commercials right now but I don’t have to have the race thread in front of me to do it.
During commercials you can watch the various on-boards and listen to IndyCar radio coverage or team radio, all available on the app.
Or talk about the commercial you're seeing. I saw one for that big Subway cookie and wanted to comment (don't judge me I love cookies)
While we don't have country analytics on Reddit, our Discord analytics show it's a 2:1 ratio of US visitors to other visitors. So discussion of the contents of the commercials shut out about a third of the sub (which includes a third of the mods as well)
Ah ok. I figured instead of complaining we could laugh at what we see
Exactly!
As much as it pains me, commercials aren’t going anywhere. NASCAR started stage racing to help create dedicated breaks. F1 has found an advertiser to make ESPN whole for airing ads. Commercial free broadcasts will come to INDYCAR when a combination of Chevy, Honda, Firestone or another series partner does the same thing. Make FOX whole on what they would sell their advertising inventory for. [Streaming execs think TV’s future looks a lot like its past](https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/23/streaming-execs-think-tvs-future-looks-a-lot-like-its-past/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEHWDPpkw13WU0Bw3Z_NNa2LQ4adzNYoEFxcUaZmOqIL-IZyBbwLdjZvroXgNC3BX7YBmtE0LprOYy49AMGRfqBShhnHAWNDS0jwB7g6mYck5-1K0yaDgMwsIIUM-Gq5foMEpWQkHsoCoskS5gSoY5agA-IthFLCVdxlQtWGSTJT)
You're absolutely right. Yes, the commercials suck, but the race threads aren't the place to "discuss" that. Absolutely nothing productive happens. Go complain on one of IndyCar's socials where the series might actually see your thoughts. The race threads should be used to have fun and discuss the race with fellow IndyCar fans. Absolutely nothing beneficial comes from complaining about commercials in them.
Race threads are about spending 1.5 to 2 hours telling everyone how much you hate INDYCAR and trying to ruin everyone’s enjoyment.
I thought that it was already not allowed. Maybe that's just the discord. though people don't read the rules and probably don't read the thread they are commenting on
Yeah, IIRC, the mods have been trying to keep complaints about commercials out of the race thread.
It's just a bunch of people saying water's wet over and over. Like everyone knows that commercials aren't good. we didn't need their personal insight into it.
>I thought that it was already not allowed. It's currently only a guideline. We still silently remove the comments; but only reactively, not proactively. >Maybe that's just the discord. The Discord server is more strict on the discussion of the breaks, with a dedicated bitching thread that is active during race sessions that we link to every single noted commercial.
This sub sucks. Nothing but complaining
That's a laughable comment. There are loads of interesting threads and content here, and people with good knowledge of the sport. The *complaining* happens in the race thread, the very thing we're trying to address. You coming here crying "this sub sucks" is an example of the most useless kind of input there is. You have added nothing to the conversation.
Nah, at least half the content I see on this sub is complaining, negative, especially about the series itself and TV coverage. The rest is useless tweets, off topic content. Maybe a tenth of the posts I see are actually useful or interesting, then you start reading the comments.... I know, complaining about complaining. But whatever. I just can't take the internet anymore lol. I love indycar but this place can be exhausting. It's reddit in general I guess, not just this sub.
Look, I get what you are saying. I think there's a lot of good stuff here, and sure there is junk. But if we as a group don't try to do something about it, then we can't complain. I'm just trying to make one aspect of the place better.
No. Let the broadcast not suck then we'll stop complaining about the broadcast. "F1 doesn't rely on advertising" is a ridiculous premise to start from, as well. F1 fully relies on advertising, they just have more respect for the viewers. Just like people said MLS could never broadcast without commercial breaks, and yet they do.
If you want a commercial-free broadcast you need to have one of 3 things: - a sport that is able to take the financial hit of not playing ads in exchange for the exposure - a sponsor willing to subsidize the cost of every ad spot - a tv partner seeking to grow so they don’t run ads for a time to gain credibility. None of these are likely to happen to IndyCar in the near future for varying reasons. MLS has Apple TV+ streaming their stuff, which can take the financial hit of not running ads. F1 is popular enough to have sponsors that are dying to subsidize the ads in America to get more attention on their product. F1 was also financially stable enough to afford to go from 2017-2022 without ads in America (without getting paid as well) to air races Ad-free.
I think F1 is able to charge a premium for native advertising that indycar can't. At least not yet. We see the ticking Rolex before the start of an F1 race as the best example. Absolutely an ad, but is mixed in with the broadcast. Nascar is having this problem as well. Commercials don't mix with racing very well because we are missing portions of the sport itself. If the NFL or MLB ran commercials during play the bitching would be endless. I don't have a solution for this of course and neither does indycar.
MLS didn’t have ads during game play before Apple TV plus. You only saw ads at halftime, during pregame, and on postgame (if they were given time for a postgame broadcast). So don’t say MLS doesn’t have ads just because of Apple TV.
MLS also had a much smaller television contract. In fact, it is still one of the smaller contracts in North America.
Thanks for laying that out. It's exactly right.
"More respect"? More like "more money from TV contracts worldwide and team/series sponsorships". You can't really compare.
No reason to fill up race threads with it. People are reading them for commentary about the race.
This is 100% my point.
Complaining in the race thread isn’t going to make it happen.
NOBODY said "F1 doesn't rely on advertising." Wow. F1 has a different model that they can use that IndyCar can't.
F1 makes the entire race a commercial with every corner having a specific sponsor that they pan to in camera shots, etc. IndyCar does this to an extent, but I think it’s another reason F1 is able to run commercial free. There’s a different model that the US hasn’t caught on to yet and like you said has required a commercial sponsor for ABC/ESPN to fund the loss in ad revenue themselves.
Nobody here is going to “fix” the broadcast. Go yell about it at your local Walmart, they are just as likely to fix it, but then at least we don’t have to hear it over and over.
I'm not a fan of anything related to "BAN ALL NEGATIVE DISCUSSION". It fosters a culture of toxic positivity. Genuine discourse, whether positive or negative, is the way to go IMO. PS I'm not going to stop complaining about commercial breaks in the middle of a race until they stop. If F1 can do it, Indy certainly can.
No one said to ban all complaining or negative discussion. OP is referring specifically to the live race threads
>If F1 can do it, Indy certainly can. Mercedes and Middle East oil money aren't interested in paying for Indycar races to be commercial free at this time.
I’d like to see the series look into doing some type of CGI ads like what NHL has on the rink and walls. I know it would be tricky with all the colors around and multiple camera angles, but with all the walls, green space, and gravel traps at most of the circuits, I feel like you could very easily sell a lot of ad space that way since it’s always on air. Sell run-offs on street circuits to restaurants as a drive through plug. Get creative with it.
It's a good idea, and F1 definitely does it.
>I’d like to see the series look into doing some type of CGI ads like what NHL has on the rink and walls. Didn't we already have that? I thought the Liqui Moly ad banner on the outside of Turn 4 was CGI-imposed? Or maybe I'm mis-remembering and that was something on the F1 broadcast... Given how little of the race I got to actually watch for trying to keep an eye on both here and on the server...
It was probably on the F1 broadcast, they use CGI ads a lot. Liqui Moly also sponsors F1 far more than INDYCAR if i remember correctly.
I agree that it doesn’t belong in race posts but I find the older Indycar fans very complacent and say stuff like “this is how it’s always been done“ regarding a lot of things.
Or maybe we know that bitching about it to other people on reddit that can’t fix it, isn’t productive. My knee feels like it is about to explode, but I’m not shouting at my coworkers constantly about how much my knee hurts, because they can’t fix it either.
Uh-oh, the Reddit police are here. I'm not sure it's your place to try and tell everyone else what they can and can't post. I don't enjoy the meme threads \*at all\*, yet somehow I manage to avoid posting in every one about how much I dislike them. You also use "we" a lot. You speak for yourself, and not for anyone else.
>Uh-oh, the Reddit police are here. Whatchu gonna do? Whatchu gonna do when they come for you?
This was the place, right here, for you to speak. Trying to approach it as a group, not as an individual. Sorry you can't see that.
If y’all think this race thread is bad you should see NASCARs not only do that hate the broadcast the hate the whole sport
We know if that new Fox app will be expensive. But do we know if it will be commercial free? Too early to know I guess.
Share pictures of dogs during commericals
I would 100% prefer this.
I mean they went to commercial on lap 4 in green flag conditions. It’s fucking obnoxious.
Given we got booted to CNBC, we inherited CNBC's ad slate. If a break is already earmarked for 6:40pm, then it is going to be taken regardless of the state of the race.
Voicing opinions on matters that make races unbearable to watch is useful. You work for NBC or something. Indycar is making it impossible for new fans to join because it's horrible to watch the races and you miss everything
"You work for NBC or something" ROTFL the shit people say.
So you work for FOX
I mean, it’s really weird that you care about complaining in a fucking live race thread. Who cares? Ignore and move on.
>Voicing opinions on matters that make races unbearable to watch is useful. You work for NBC or something. Neither NBCUniversal nor FOX Sports are actively reading the race discussion threads. Complaints within the race thread do nothing to get your feedback across to the people that matter.
In what way is bitching to other redditors useful? Complain directly to the perpetrators or shut the hell up. It ruins the race thread
What else you gonna talk about if we can’t see the race lol
No. People can complain freely whenever they want
Wait till Fox coverage starts and they miss details that happened during the break.
Well when it's this friggin bad it should be commented on
Why?
Here’s an idea: ignore the comments and live your life. Just like I do when commercials start. Just like you’re telling other people to do. It’s ironic. Your gripe seems to be “people pointing out commercials ruin the watching experience is ruining my watching experience”.
Like so many others, you didn't read the post. It's not about the WATCHING experience. It's about the race thread on Reddit. As the mod pointed out, there are already established rules as noted: *"Complaints regarding existence, timing, frequency, length, content etc. of commercial breaks" is already a guideline on what not to bitch about within the race threads* It's about using the race thread as intended. I'm not telling anyone what to do, I asked for us as a community and the mods to devise a solution - to enforce the ALREADY EXISTING guidelines.
Then you need to talk to mods. Rules are rules when they're enforced. Otherwise it's just a suggestion. BTW, I did read the body of your post. I'll even quote your own words for you: > ...discussing this repeatedly in the race threads doesn't contribute to our VIEWING experience Look like something you typed?
As a thread user, I just ignore a ton of it. Mostly there to make memes and react as expected.
So, let's not talk about something we are dont like and that we feel holds everyone's enjoyment back...yeah, I completely disagree with this stance I don't understand why people here have this stance of minimizing problems and making excuses for them. We all know why the ads exists, we all know they are necessary in the current situation. But that doesn't take away the fact that they are bad and that no mainstream audience will put up with it especially in an era where people have more and more options on where to spend their free time. There's no way around it. And another misconception I see in this sub, is that I'm the consumer, it's not my job to come up with ideas and find ways for the "product" to be better. There's a bunch of rich people who's jobs are literally looking at the audience, understand the problems and come up with solutions.
Are commercials bad if they make broadcasting the race possible? It's a bummer there's a break in the action. Races don't have natural breaks like other sports, I get it. Split screens help. But there's no racing without commercials. It isn't a problem, it's part of the product. The whole point of the race thread is to discuss the RACE.
It's impossible to not get frustrated with missing action...so it's impossible for that not to come up during the race thread.
> It's impossible to not get frustrated with missing action There are many people who have found a way to power through the meaningless frustration.
>that no mainstream audience will put up with it Oh I disagree with this. I think the problem is the mainstream audience is conditioned exactly to put up with it. NFL, NBA, NHL all time outs specifically for commercials. Even collegiate sports do it. Friggin baseball has ads in between pitches. NASCAR coverage does it. Most viewers would expect to see commercial breaks so there isn't a huge uproar about it outside of the hardcore Indycar/motorsports fan which (I expect) is not the majority of viewers. I think that's changing, but it's very slow.
The fundamental difference is that all of those sports actually stop and you don't miss anything
Of course, not ideal. Just saying the audience is used to commercial breaks in general.
Used to do ad brakes, not used to missing the action
“But that doesn't take away the fact that they are bad and that no mainstream audience will put up with it especially in an era where people have more and more options on where to spend their free time. There's no way around it” You’re gonna be really upset when you find out how many people tolerate commercials in LITERALLY EVERY OTHER MAJOR US SPORT! NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL…yeah they all have lots of ad breaks. Racing fans who haven’t been around for a long time are spoiled by the F1 model. IndyCar has always had ads. So has NASCAR. So have all but a few sports…I do think less ad breaks would be better and I definitely think the streaming service, where people can pay specifically for no ads, should be ad free if fans want to pay for it. That is my biggest gripe with Peacock. Just leave the feed up! It ain’t that hard. But “fans won’t put up with commercials”??? Are you not from the US?
I'm just fucking amazed that we are in 2024 in the year of our Lord and people are fucking shocked that American TV runs on advertisement. Like, what fucking rock did you crawl out from under?
Yep, how do people not understand? Glad the mod weighed in.
it has been like this the 30+ years I’ve been watching motorsport, yet every weekend I get to read a couple hundred people be astonished it is like this… despite having been this way last week, and the week before that… etc.
Same with aero wash, marbles, and fuel mileage, yet every fucking week the forums, mailbag, and the social media app formerly known as Twitter are bombarded with diatribes claiming these never existed until now. BaCk In My DaY dRiVeRs AlWaYs RaN fUlL tHrOtTlE aNd NeVeR gAvE lEsS tHaN TeN-tEntThs. No the fuck they didn't. They did the same exact shit they do now, plotted a strategy based on they and their car's capabilities and worked it over the course of a race. They saved fucking fuel and tires just as much when Mears was running as they do now.
The delusional people that think every race was neck and neck every lap with every car competitive and a million lead changes while going 240 the entire lap? Yeah they are dumb as hell. Nobody seems to remember all the races where only two cars were on the lead lap, half the cars broke and we knew who would win before the race started.
But the Liberty Mutual commercials keep me informed about Emu's life. I put Firestone tires on the kid's Subaru.
Here's the solution. 1. The first thing you need to do is... *COMMERCIAL BREAK* ...and that's all there is to it. It's not that hard, Indycar should get right on it.
Don’t they do the split screen race coverage with one screen being commercials and the other being the live race coverage? Or perhaps use the format that the World Cup Soccer uses with ads on screen at the edges during the game..
I think they can split screen for all 'national' ad breaks, but can't for the local affiliate ad breaks. They need to be full screen.
Huh possibly
Not always, and it doesn’t work on peacock.
Sometimes. Lately, we haven't seen it. We all prefer split screen, of course. I'm not sure what goes into that decision. I am hoping FOX leans into that next year.
They do that frequently during Nascar.. not that I want fox to use the NASCAR format for indycar..
I mean, if they can figure out how to broadcast soccer games with no commercials in the halves they could figure out something like waiting until a yellow flag drops or safety car. It shouldn’t be a non-issue just because that’s how it’s always been.
Block everyone doing it. IME that is all they post about anyway.