As an Indiana native, Eric Shanks can’t remember exactly when the rite of passage began of traveling to Indianapolis Motor Speedway. His first Indianapolis 500 memory is of the 1985 race, Danny Sullivan’s “Spin and Win” 1985 victory, when Shanks was around 14 and had fully embraced the way his home state played such a role in American culture.
“I think everybody takes pride in there being a spotlight on this part of the country,” Shanks said. “The Pacers are only in the playoffs when they are in the playoffs, the Colts aren’t always in. But this is a guarantee every year.”
When he became CEO of Fox Sports in 2010, Shanks had a wish list of events he wanted for the network. Always at the top was the Indianapolis 500, a property Fox Sports finally landed this year. The network is in its first year of a new broadcast deal with IndyCar and on Sunday televises its first Indy 500.
Shanks from the start has vowed the production will be the biggest of the year for Fox Sports — a lofty promise for a network that also carries the Super Bowl and the World Series, among other major sporting events.
“We are going to blow the doors off of Indy. We’re going to bring everything that Fox has to bear,” he said.
He’s been relentless in pursuing his promise and has spent the first five IndyCar races of the year working out early-season glitches that ranged from an unstable graphics package, issues delivering timing and scoring, a mid-race loss of transmission, and enough bumps to drive Shanks nuts as he strives for a perfect production. The work has gone on at the same time Fox Sports televised the first 16 races of the NASCAR season, a run that culminated last Sunday night with the All-Star race.
Only four of the NASCAR races were on Fox, and even with the rain-effected season-opening Daytona 500, that quartet averaged 4,986,000 viewers.
Fox promised IndyCar its entire 17-race slate will be aired on broadcast — including both days of last weekend’s qualifying — but the numbers have been sporadic and unable to keep pace with NASCAR.
The IndyCar ratings don’t bother Shanks.
“I think you just want to be constantly showing growth in a lot of areas,” he said. “You want to be showing growth in attendance. I’m happy to hear merchandise sales are up — you’ve got new sponsors coming in — you just want to show growth.”
Fox Sports last week made several changes to races later this season (mainly start times) to ensure IndyCar and NASCAR do not go directly head-to-hear, something that happened several times earlier this year when the network juggled both racing series. But Shanks told The Associated Press he is not considering moving IndyCar off of Fox to Fox Sports or another property if the ratings don’t improve over the next few weeks.