The Champ Car World Series – formerly CART prior to its close season take-over – recently signed a domestic cable TV deal with Spike TV in another of its frequently criticised ‘time-buys’, a process which sees the sport pay for the TV space, rather than receiving a fee.
With the domestic package in place, Champ Car has shifted its focus to the international scene and has joined with a number of broadcast partners.
TV Azteca will again broadcast all Champ Car races in Mexico, TSN will broadcast all Champ Car events in English, with the exception of the three Canadian races, which will be covered by Global.
In addition, RDS will broadcast each of the Champ Car events in French.
Fox Sports Latin America will provide coverage in Spanish throughout the Caribbean and Latin America while US Spanish-language telecasts will be provided by Fox Sports en EspaC1ol.
Channel 10 will provide broadcast coverage to the continent of Australia and will be the home broadcaster for the Champ Car race at Surfers Paradise while Fox Middle East will provide Champ Car coverage in English to that region.
Said Champ Car president Dick Eidswick: “The international following that the Champ Car World Series enjoys is a key part of our success and we have worked diligently to join partners that would provide the best shows for our fans.
“We have built good relationships with our broadcast partners to date, and will continue working even harder to increase our global coverage.”
The 2004 Champ Car World Series season will begin April 18 with the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, the first race on a 16-race calendar.
Defying some doubters, the series’ new owners Paul Gentilozzi, Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerald Forsythe have delivered 18 teams for the season. At one point, with a number of major teams quitting to join rival series the IRL, there was a danger the number of teams would shrink to a ridiculous level, threatening the future of the series.
Veteran Champ Car team owner Derrick Walker announced last week he would be fielding a Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone for the full 2004 Champ Car World Series season.
Said Gentilozzi: “We have always maintained that we would have a full field for 2004 and men like Derrick Walker, Carl Haas, Eric Bachelart, Dale Coyne, Carl Russo and the entire Herdez ownership group have demonstrated their commitment to building the best open-wheel racing series possible.
“The entire Champ Car community has done an incredible amount of work in getting to this point and we’re confident that the 2004 season will be a tremendous success.”
The new Champ Car season gets underway next weekend with 18 cars lining-up on the starting grid – and a number of new international TV deals.
