This season will be the first where FOX has taken over the IndyCar broadcasting rights from former partner NBC, and the network has already illustrated its commitment to the American open-wheel series with an impressive ad spend for the 2025 Super Bowl.

In fact, FOX reportedly spent at least $5 million more to air those brief advertisements during the Super Bowl than it paid to secure a full season of broadcasting rights.

FOX goes all-in on IndyCar advertisement

As the 2024 IndyCar season came to a close, it was announced that broadcast partner NBC would not renew its deal to continue airing the sport. Instead, FOX had hedged its bets on the series and invested heavily in purchasing the right to show IndyCar on its own television channels.

Reports have suggested that FOX paid around $25 million to purchase broadcasting rights from NBC, which spent about $20 million per year to show IndyCar.

The IndyCar/NBC relationship lasted for two decades, but as its most recent contract neared expiration, it was clear that some of the magic had been lost.

Rather than airing all races live on network television, several IndyCar events were relegated to NBC Sports or the USA Network in order to give priority to other sporting events. Other IndyCar races were only available to stream on Peacock, the brand’s bespoke streaming service.

Making matters more challenging, fans were critical of NBC’s lack of promotion for the sport, and the waning quality of its coverage.

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Still, the move to FOX came as something of a surprise, and it left many fans skeptical that this new network would be able to provide anything unique when compared to NBC.

FOX has remedied that concern almost immediately.

In the build-up to the Super Bowl, the network has released three IndyCar advertisements serving as smart, rapid-fire profiles of three drivers: reigning Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden, reigning champion Alex Palou, and fan favorite Pato O’Ward.

It costs roughly $7 million to air a 30-second advertisement during the Super Bowl, and up to $4.5 million for a pre-game advertisement. By airing all three ads before and during the biggest NFL game in America, FOX spent at least $30 million — $5 million more than it spent to secure the rights in the first place.

“We’re pulling out all the stops to make sure this launches well and rolls through the full season,” Fox Sports senior vice president of on-air promotion Bill Battin told IndyStar.

“It’s a big deal for us. We’ve launched new properties, but this feels like a really, really big deal for the company.

“We have great platforms to launch these athletes into. These are amazing drivers, and they’ve got these personalities, but no one knows who they are outside the sport. The avid (fans) know, but we want to make them household names.”

Creative directors Alice Blastorah and Josh Hacohen are responsible for the content of the advertisements, and in a detailed interview with RACER, they revealed that they took inspiration from Netflix’s Formula 1 docuseries Drive to Survive when it came to focusing on the personal nature of profiling the drivers — but that the actual content needed to be unique and highlight the qualities of IndyCar.

“There’s such great personalities,” Hacohen said.

“They’re more than marketable — they’re humans you want to get to know and not just in a five-minute Conan O’Brien interview-type thing but really get to know these little specifics about them.

“So for us, it was like, we don’t have an hour-long episode of a docuseries. We have 45 seconds.

“We wanted to build these larger-than-life personas, because it felt like it was the way in.”

The advertisements have received praise from IndyCar fans young and old, and their appearance during the Super Bowl is a clear indication that FOX is taking IndyCar seriously — and that it intends to make the most of its investment.

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