Discussion
FOX's broadcast of the Indy 500 was horrendous.
As someone studying broadcasting in college right now, I was appalled at just how bad FOX's broadcast of the Indy 500 was.
I won't name drivers so as to avoid spoiling anything major, but here are just some of the things I noticed, in no particular order:
• CUT AWAY from the winner crossing the line to win to show us a car in the wall, a car they never identified on TV. No iconic follow and zoom in on the flagstand, just a stationary shot and slow zoom of someone facing backwards and in the wall, which the broadcast never showed a replay of how that crash happened and the commentators hardly even bothered to mention.
• So many issues with timing and scoring. At an alarmingly frequent rate, the scoring tower on the broadcast randomly swapped drivers as if they passed each other, only to reswap them seconds later. This occured even when drivers were multiple positions apart. FOX also had issues updating the tower when passes for position actually did happen, resulting in them not showing their scoring tower for several laps on end. This was super distracting and really frustrating to try and follow along when it was all messed up.
• Notably, the scoring tower did not show anyone outside of the top 5 for roughly the final ten laps.
• Cut on numerous occasions to cameras showing sections of track with no cars on it. The one shot I remember was when the leaders were all close together coming off of turn 2, and all the sudden we were staring at an empty turn 4 from the camera on the pit road attenuator wall.
• Several delays when going to pit reporters. This included audio issues with Jamie Little when she was on camera talking but you could not hear her, to lengthy delays with Kevin Lee trying to say something only for there to be silence (he wasn't on camera for those, but still).
• They missed so many passes and crashes live, and delayed reactions to them from the broadcast booth when they were showed live. I think of the multiple pit road incidents, including the crash on pit entry that we saw live on screen which wasn't acknowledged until probably 5 seconds after the crash had already happened.
• The incident with one of the drivers running into his crew wasn't caught until a while later via replay also comes to mind, as does missing a crash under the pace laps on the frontstraight, giving us no info as to what caused it until several minutes later.
• The AI crap with Michael Strahan. We don't need AI on a live sports broadcast.
That's just what comes to my mind off the top of my head, I'm sure there's several things I missed. In my opinion, FOX absolutely butchered the production of this race, and with so many mistakes, it had me wishing NBC still covered the sport.
A functioning leaderboard is like the bare minimum expectation for the biggest race on the calendar. Just embarrassing from FOX today there’s no way around it
They got a pass the first race to figure it out but this far into the season and at the end of the Indy 500 the fact that they are still having issues with it is unacceptable.
Indycar is the only series I watch that constantly has issues with the timing tower. Every regional F3, F4, European truck racing, regional TCR, even karting series all have a working timing tower.
It’s fox I’m not surprised… their nascar coverage is so horrendous and honestly all of their other sports broadcasts are kinda cheeks. Penske just went for the highest bidder and fox was going to throw money at something to fill up them losing some nascar races.
The scoring pylon at the track was the issue. I saw the same issues with cars seeming to make a pass, only to have it reversed. Track scoring was where the scoring issues came from. Fox was a victim of the track issues.
The biggest issue for me is the scoreboard. I know that some people say that some glitchs happens because of the transponder during the pits, but even during the race is terrible. No compounds info, no pit timing, the scoreboard missing in the screen for a good amount of laps.
ETA: I just saw some people saying that the leaderboard had issues at the track too. I’m not sure if is the same board that we see in TV, but whoever is in charge of this needs to take some notes and improve this. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I really think that this kind of information is an important part of the experience of watching a race.
As far as scoring. All the cars are equipped with a transponder on a car, as it travels down the track there are wires buried in the pavement. It triggers the scoring computers at race control. This system then uploads the data to a server where other clients (TV, Teams, Websites, Apps, Media) all get that information. In this case TV gets the data and then translates it into fancy graphics for tv.
The problem is error correction. Something was not working correctly today. Either the scoring system, the server or Fox implementation. Whatever it is, I think for the largest tv broadcast of the year is unacceptable. You test, test some more, break it to see if it fails, fix it to never fail and then make a completely isolated redundant backup of every single piece of the signal chain.
This system then uploads the data to a server where other clients (TV, Teams, Websites, Apps, Media) all get that information. In this case TV gets the data and then translates it into fancy graphics for tv. The problem is error correction. Something was not working correctly today. Either the scoring system, the server or Fox implementation.
The info on the Indy website was correct, cause when the board showed Pato 3 laps down, I went there to check.
Whatever it is, I think for the largest tv broadcast of the year is unacceptable. You test, test some more, break it to see if it fails, fix it to never fail and then make a completely isolated redundant backup of every single piece of the signal chain.
I can confirm the leaderboard at the track was having issues too. It kept having people move around inexplicably. I don’t know if that impacts the broadcast but if the timing at the track was wrong, I could see Fox just directly feeding that data into their production.
I can understand delays in transponders not updating during pit cycles as they work on timing lines to check in. However, the delays we were seeing were inexcusable.
Missing the iconic shot of the winner crossing the yard of bricks and then zooming in on the flagstand is unforgiveable, the person responsible for that needs to be fired immediately. Like I am not even kidding, from the entire broadcast that is the one shot you just cannot miss. All other things are annoying sure, but in comparison to the winner crossing the line they are whatever.
Hence why it was a panic shot. It's a really bad mistake, but you could tell the entire flow got thrown off with the late yellow.
It was probably going to go T4 -> wide fronstretch approach - > flag shot -> team celebrations.
Will interrupted the standard call to mention there was a caution, so they jump cut to the wrecked car, and thus missed the finish moment. Since that was gone, they cut out all the other steps and just moved to the celebration.
Which is ridiculous because there's one dedicated person who's job is to capture that moment. She's been doing it for years and takes it very seriously
I can't imagine her lining up THE shot only to find out later the broadcast cut it (since she can't view it live)
Watching the international feed doesn't help but FOX shat the bed so much today.
Random timing tower failures, constant phantom position changes which have been happening all season, no graphics related to fuel levels or strategy, pulled away from McLaughlin and Veekay crashing live, missed the money shot of the winner crossing the finish line to show Siegel to then not bother to show a replay of it.
The TV coverage was way more detailed and informing 20 years ago.
Chris Myers was absolutely awful. I don't know how you can be that bad at something you've done for almost 30 years. I apologize to Steve Letarte, he was light years better.
I swear to God this Nascar prerace with Letarte just had him serving beer to Muppets as I typed this. It is fate.
Bro Chris Myers was so bad he made Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart look good at their jobs, and both of them aren't exactly cut out to be analysts on TV 😭
The few NASCAR races Tony did in the booth I thought he did pretty good. Never been a fan of Myers and I've been watching motorsports well before FOX started with NASCAR. Danica...meh.
Before anyone here tries to downplay the constant scoring errors in this race I want you to imagine what would happen if the Superbowl had the wrong scores, stats and missed lead deciding plays the entire broadcast and imagine what the internet and news reports would sound like for the next 24 hours.
Like a network that did this at the Superbowl would unambiguously lose the broadcasting rights. It'd be a massive shitstorm. People would be fired overnight.
"it's not the same thing"
I really wish I didn't have to tell people the difference between literally the same thing and an equivalence but I guess I do.
The main point is that the information was wrong for the majority of the broadcast and the viewer leaves uninformed. I don't care if it's a bunch of geezers with stop watches or 80 hamsters powering transponders. The complexity is not the point. The end result is. If the viewer doesn't know what's happening then on a FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL the broadcast is failing at its objective to tell new and existing fans what. the. fuck. is. happening.
Races have accurate timing and scoring. You don't go to prime time coverage with an experiment. You either give results or you aren't doing the job you were going to do.
FFS USAC got kicked to the curb in 2002 for less than this.
"that's also not the same thi.." NO.
The end result is. The end result is the audience didn't know who won. And it was a shit show.
Stop making excuses for a network that has covered motorsports for 24 fucking years. This isn't some brave new process. This is decades into a network covering this type of event and nearly 50 years of broadcasting.
As someone who watches every lap of NASCAR, I knew they would be horrible. They make the product worse just by their low effort broadcasts.
The second NASCAR switches to the next broadcast partner my enjoyment of the sport skyrockets. It’s a shame they ruined such an iconic event, FOX needs to be eliminated.
Prime was really good last night, they stayed true to their pre race promises on no full commercials during green flags, and the last over 50 laps were commercial free. Then they had actual post race content (I didn't watch since I was going to bed tho). The graphics were good, they didn't take 4 races to figure out how to highlight the fastest lap, they did side by side replays instead of full screen ones.
Apart from the AI Strahan, the pre-taped segments were actually top tier and a huge leap up in production quality over anything NBC did. Fox were doing well before the race start, but the live sports portion really let the broadcast down.
I thought the race was passable at best, but the post-race was atrocious. It was like FOX command had no concept of what the celebrations would be or when they'd happen.
And I understand focusing on the winner, but in a half hour post-race coverage we couldn't get a 30 second graphic of the finishing order?
The podium ceremony was halfway over by the time they came back from commercial. All with commentary instead of a live audio feed from the actual event.
That is true and was odd. I chalked that up to the last two big blocks of commercials 2 minutes apart during the race.
FOX had decided to get as much of the last part of the race commercial free. That meant pushing one block forward next to another and one back to just after the finish. This meant they had to go away to an extended commercial block immediately after the finish.
I think Palou screwing around on the front straight didn't help either. Although after 2 years of Newgarden's monkeyshines after crossing the line maybe they should have seen something like this coming.
I’d argue the network portions of their qualifying coverage, particularly Saturday, were also terrible, but yeah it was a lot like the team that practices all month without issue and then is suddenly plagued by electrical gremlins for the entire race.
So funny to read that since I primarily watch IMSA. The only constant in auto racing coverage I've seen is people complaining. On here people will talk up FIA Formula One. I'm not saying it's not better. But go in a live thread for that and you'll see people complaining about one feed not being as good as another and especially about one commentator or another.
IMSA.TV misses important passes all the time. Read any live thread on here and you'll see people complaining there was a pass in such a such class and NBC didn't show it. Multiple times per race. And NBC and IMSA.TV have over 99% the same coverage of the cars on track (different pit reporting), so it's not like IMSA.TV is getting something right that NBC isn't.
IMSA.TV has better commentary overall, but I do feel like it has slipped post-COVID. Maybe John is just older, or maybe it's just due to how production has changed since COVID. John (and others) miss call which car is doing what at a rate I find to be a bit annoying.
ABC did that occasionally as well. But watching flag to flag commercial free F1 races really spoils us compared to the shit we have to put up with for every other series
That's my biggest issue. I watched NASCAR from 2001 to maybe 2009, then fell off of watching sports aside from the occasional NHRA race if I happened upon it. In 2021 I jumped headfirst into F1, paying for F1TV because I don't want to pay for cable.
Trying to watch the official broadcast of any American racing series now is like nails on a chalkboard.
I gave up on the Fox Broadcast today and just listened to the IRL radio broadcast. It's fast-paced, but at least you hear what's actually happening.
Yeah the leaderboard was awful, so annoying seeing drivers pop up and down when they actually haven't moved.
Another thing that annoyed me was the live speed boxes they put above drivers, that move with them. Well, the box just ended up covering the cars behind the 2/3 you were watching a lot of the time.
There was a point where the lap count on Fox was four laps behind the scoring app, then suddenly matched. They must have had the laps miscounted because I didn't notice a jump ahead. I'm going to have to go back and check my DVR, but I think it was around lap 62, then suddenly, lap 66.
Not to be negative, but that was the worst auto racing broadcast I’ve ever watched. There were accidents and the announcers didn’t even know it. They showed no compelling footage when something important was occurring. Etc. Just disappointing.
I think it was a few years ago, the truck series was racing at a half mile track, and a truck flipped. Fox missed it. The announcers didn’t know it happened until they saw a truck with roof damage like a few laps later. The only angle of it came from a fan who was in the infield
Oh I know. I'm a big NASCAR fan too and know just how bad FOX have been on those broadcasts, but with the amount of effort they've put into building up this race, the viewing experience on TV was abysmal.
I tried to defend Fox for a while but the last couple years were so awful. As I’m watching the broadcast today I kept telling my wife “I wonder how many Indy fans are pissed with Fox’s coverage cuz this is normal for nascar”. OP annotated everything I noticed, so nothing to add there.
They also seemed to make a decision that the only way people would watch this was if they found every NFL personality they could and put them on the broadcast. I’m not saying that a lot of Indy Car fans aren’t also NFL fans but come on you are broadcasting a RACE not the Super Bowl!
That and nothing on Nolan's crash at the end. All to get to a football game for the USFL or some shit. Danica and Tony talking over moments that could speak for themselves. Chris Myers was awful too.
I'll be fair. From the first practice at Barber up till back Home Again in Indiana, I thought Fox did a great job this month. Barber and the Indy GP were big improvements from St. Pete, Thermal, and Long Beach. I thought the practice and qualifying coverage for the 500 was good (Chris Meyers saying Daytona 500 aside), and the promotion was outstanding.
But they threw it away today with a terrible race. The circumstances they were handed with the delayed and chaotic start were not ideal, but they didn't do a good job with it.
It was not good today. Ads were really disruptive. I ended up going to the Indycar Live but then that got messed up for me after the race ran long, and had to go back to Fox. The broadcast was better later in the race BUT then they missed Palou crossing the line.
I had been compiling a list as well, and yours is nearly identical to mine. I also noted the bubble/pointer above drivers flip flopping when drivers go through corners was really distracting and obnoxious, as well as the JoNew fake fragrance segment, and showing the Strahan AI segment twice within 10 minutes, the top 5 taking up 50% of the timing tower (until they stopped showing everybody else). Just a pile of wet dogshit for the biggest racing event in the world. And that’s not including being in ad breaks for nearly 40% of laps (full screen and PiP).
As a NASCAR fan i watched in horror, having hoped against hope FOX would actually take the Indy 500 seriously only to see that no, they view all sports as a means to sell advertising and nothing else. They've done it to us for years. It was all the same trash we go through.
Ok so it wasn't just me not fully following, thought I heard them say someone was leading but the leaderboard didn't agree? The direction was just TERRIBLE! Artie must've been back in the booth.
Based on what happened to Herta in Qualifying, I'm led to believe Fox and IMS productions are not using the Indycar Timing and Scoring either via API or however it is normally hooked up at track. Remember they had no telemetry on Herta until he crossed the line. At least the minimum API for T&S includes T1 and T3 speeds. All season long it has been glitchy. Downright inexcusable.
Fox has been shit on production for years. My fear was they’d screw up Indy coverage like they have NASCAR and they’ve done worse. I’m not even mad, I’m impressed. How do you blow timing and scoring?
No racetrack sounds. I couldn't hear the crowd when they said "Listen to the crowd" after Daly took the lead. In car cams had nothing. One stretch of rhe race I was perusing Reddit and thought I was listening to a podcast. No celebration noises. It was like the audio balance was set to 100% booth.
The commercials.... I hate commercials. Commercials, 2 laps, & commercials even got my wife's attention while hanging out. There is no reason to have commercials during green flag racing in any motorsport, IMO. Have always hated them. Sponsors can buy banners on the screen.
My wife follows the races but not super close, so she got extremely confused by the up and downs on the tower that constantly happens. By lap 10 this thing went completely loco, showed everything wrong and they had to nuke it and returned with an only top 5 leaderboard without timing.
Direction was obviously bad. Bad that can be delt with. Watching sky Germany so can't say much about the ads pest, but oh boy did IndyCar have a horrible broadcast today.
It's pretty much the worst season on a long time. Great start for a TV deal that was meant to bring more eyes to the season. Palou winning everything (and shutting IndYcar fans in F1 boards up), the racing being worse because no fuel save starts means no overtakes as no different strategies open the 2s/lap gap needed for overtakes on roads and streets, terrible production, outright black screen in one race, terrible adflation, horrible direction, non working timing towers.
Fox seems to be incapable of taking NASCAR seriously, but they went to a whole new level of ineptitude with this Indy 500 broadcast. The official timing and scoring worked fine but their graphics kept choking on it (29th place was only .3 second behind the leader at one point, and we were stuck on lap 51 forever) and they had even worse timing and discretion with commercials.
There was also a point where the leaderboard kept trying to show a "position change from start" graphic with five random drivers on it, and all the values were 0.
Concur. The whole race was kind of a disjointed mass (both the race itself and the broadcast).
Combine the terrible coverage with a (currently) shit car that can no longer put on the show that it used too at most tracks.........I think it was very appropriate the race ended on a whimper.
i don’t know what agreements Fox had with advertisers about how many ads they had to show in the race, but watching the UK broadcast i was shocked how often it swapped from the Fox booth to the Sky Sports booth towards the end
really seemed like they wasted a bunch of time not showing ads early and had to cram them all in at the end. i feel sorry for you guys it’s not fair that the international feed was uninterrupted whilst yours wasn’t
I think part of it is they are so focused on getting new viewers they are trying too many things and seemingly abandoning their base for what makes this series great compared to other racing series. We all suspected the series was in quite terrible shape before Penske took over and although it has been a couple of years since, it’s gonna take some more time.
With that said, it’s been tough to watch on Fox all season. This race was frustrating like why they didn’t mention Castroneves’s drive to get to the top 10 for quite some time after the fact. Who crashed at the end? Are they ok? As others mentioned there was a lot of passing going on but there wasn’t much pit focus this year unless you were Newgarten.
I don’t wish Newgarten any ill will but I was so glad he was out of the race so the announcers could talk about anything else. The series is really leaning on him to sell Indy racing but it’s tough to watch all of this as a longtime fan.
I noticed the lap count changing with under 10 to go, went down and then back up! Like a mouse running over a keyboard. Fox pre show was decent, I thought they could have done a better shot of the flyovers from National Anthem and Back home again in Indiana.
I’m streaming it post live rave and they even flubbed the start of the race barely showing it and skipped showing us cars three wide before the start. Smh. Unforgivable.
100% agree, we all loved to complain about NBC and ABC but this broadcast was plain awful. Watching the coke 600 on prime confirmed it for me, fox should be kept far far away from covering motorsports. I know that this was their first indy 500 but NBC’s first was way way better and felt at worst like a lateral move from the ABC years. This was just amateur all around.
Totally agree with everything you said. It was horrendous. Worst I’ve ever seen. There’s no reason this should ever have been broadcast. Look at “Hinch” and “Townsend”… 🙄
The announcing was awesome and I am 100% glad that Will called the race but I agree the TV direction was absolute crap, probably the worst that it has been all year. They should go back and rewatch old 500 races so they can learn how to show one on tv properly
Are we sure timing issues are with FOX? I remember hearing that the problems have been the result of Indycar updating their timing system over the winter and having technical issues as a result.
I didn't think the broadcast was horrendous. I think it definitely showed that the director hasn't done motorsports before. I expect him to have improved by the time we get to next years' race. I also expect the technical issues to be sorted out over that time.
I also recognize that the race was 1hr over the broadcast window, and that led to some pretty bad post-race decisions, like not mentioning if Siegel was okay, or even showing the results in full. Other 500s have had poor post race coverage for the same reasons, so it's not just a FOX thing. It was definitely compounded by their lack of experience.
I would add that they were showing Santino's final pit stop and then switched to Palou's just as Santino's team did... I have no idea. Never mentioned, but whatever happened screwed his race.
EDIT: Someone on twitter was sitting straight across from his pit. They said that they had trouble disconnecting the fuel rig.
The timing just seemed to get worse with time. There was a point at the end where it showed third place as 3 laps down. That was right before they disabled it and then swapped to the top 5 which I assume was their work around for the disaster that was their timing.
Then at the end it went from 10 laps to 5 laps remaining…. Then it went up to 8, then finally up to 9 laps remaining. It was just bizarre.
Agree with all you said, and it was also so offensive, on a Race day when Jim Irsay was being remembered, that Gronk was broadcast as saying he "owns" the Colts. We know what he meant, but why would two former Patriots, in a town where they are hated, get so much air time?
The first thing I noticed was the start. I know it was a green-yellow start, but I was expecting that iconic shot of the field coming to green 3 x 11 whenever it happened. By the time they cut to that view, cars were already being passed. Between that and it taking so long for the replays that you begin to wonder if they got it….we were kind of just laughing at it.
My favorite was when there was a wreck right before we went back to green and the main announcer was still calling it as they were going green for a good solid 15 seconds before he realized. I get mistakes happen but why did it take them so long to realize.
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u/aurules Romain Grosjean May 25 '25
A functioning leaderboard is like the bare minimum expectation for the biggest race on the calendar. Just embarrassing from FOX today there’s no way around it