{"id":788497,"date":"2026-07-08T15:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T15:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/788497\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T15:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T15:39:08","slug":"odonnell-prime-video-wishes-it-bought-more-nascar-races-for-current-media-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/788497\/","title":{"rendered":"O\u2019Donnell: Prime Video wishes it bought more NASCAR races for current media cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Video would like to broadcast more NASCAR races, but that\u2019s unlikely anytime soon with the racing circuit\u2019s current split set through 2031, according to NASCAR CEO Steve O\u2019Donnell.<\/p>\n

Last year, the series started a seven-year media-rights cycle through 2031, with four networks airing the Cup Series and a fifth airing the O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series in The CW. Talks around the next cycle will start in 2029, O\u2019Donnell said in a phone interview last week, giving NASCAR close to a three-year runway to polish the sport before having its $1.1B per-annum media value reassessed.<\/p>\n

One of the new entrants this cycle was Prime Video, whose coverage has been well received among NASCAR fans. Fox airs the first 12 points races before Prime does five; TNT follows with the next five, and NBC Sports finishes the final 14.<\/p>\n

According to an X poll from The Athletic reporter Jeff Gluck on how his followers viewed Prime\u2019s coverage this summer, 83% said they loved it and 13% said they liked it. Less than 4% said they disliked or hated it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got contractual obligations obviously, but what I can say — I don\u2019t think I\u2019m giving away any trade secrets — is if you talk to Prime, they wish they would have bought more,\u201d said O\u2019Donnell, when asked if there might be any talks before 2031 about Prime getting more races. \u201cIf you talk to Turner, they wish they would have bought more. That\u2019s a good thing — that\u2019s great for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve talked to Eric Shanks at Fox, I\u2019ve talked with folks at Amazon, I\u2019ve talked with Turner, and all of them are really happy with what\u2019s going on right now and feel the momentum in the sport. Our job now is to really show that growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just over two months into his new role as CEO<\/a>, O\u2019Donnell is feeling good about the sport and the season, which is nearly halfway through. Touching on NASCAR\u2019s seven sellouts so far in \u201926, O\u2019Donnell said: \u201cWhen you look at attendance metrics, social metrics, sponsorship metrics — they\u2019re all doing really, really well. So [NASCAR needs to] continue to turn that into ratings growth, especially around the younger demo and really bring the sport to more and more people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the incumbent broadcasters for this media-rights cycle, Fox Sports has drawn criticism from NASCAR fans, who in recent years have made accusations on social media that the network doesn\u2019t broadcast the sport in a serious enough manner.<\/p>\n

Asked if he\u2019s talked with Fox about its coverage, O\u2019Donnell said: \u201cIf you look at last year, any time you have a new broadcast partner come into the sport, there\u2019s changes or they potentially up the game or do something different — and everyone takes a little bit of that and says, \u2018What can I do?\u2019 So you look at Amazon, and what they did, and Turner, and I thought going into the beginning of this year, Fox took a lot of that energy and delivered for us on the 500.\u201d<\/p>\n

RFK Racing co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski received plaudits for a recent segment during a postrace show on Prime in which he used telemetry to break down how a competitor saved fuel as a strategy to win the race. To that end, O\u2019Donnell said that what NASCAR has been telling its broadcast partners is that \u201cour fans are really hungry for information and storylines — and so that\u2019s the information we\u2019re passing along to all of our partners: tell the story, tell the story about the data that\u2019s happening in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Video would like to broadcast more NASCAR races, but that\u2019s unlikely anytime soon with the racing circuit\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[971,49,48,36805,12716,634,66632,82,26061],"class_list":["post-788497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-amazon","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fox-sports","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-nbc-sports-group","tag-sports","tag-tnt-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}