I swear I had
something for this
| Big big news happening: https://racer.com/2025/07/31/f...penske-entertainmentquote: Fox Corporation acquires one-third interest in Penske Entertainment
Penske Entertainment and Fox Corporation, the parent company of FOX Sports, have announced that FOX has acquired a one-third interest in Penske Entertainment, including both IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The partners said the investment is expected to bolster the following initiatives:
* Innovative and industry-leading racing and entertainment events
* A hyper-engaged digital strategy and immersive content focus
* Enhanced promotion and star-building opportunities for NTT IndyCar Series drivers
* Today’s announcement also includes a multi-year extension of IndyCar's media rights with FOX Sports.
“This partnership is built on long-standing trust and a shared vision for the future,” Roger Penske said. “FOX sees the incredible potential across our sport and wants to play an active role in building our growth trajectory. Lachlan Murdoch and his team, starting with Eric Shanks, are committed to our success and will bring incredible energy and innovation to IndyCar.”
FOX Sports acquired IndyCar's media rights in 2025, bringing fresh promotional resources and significantly larger reach to the series. This year’s Indianapolis 500 on FOX averaged 7.01 million viewers, a 41 percent increase over the previous edition and a 17-year high. So far, the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season is averaging a 31 percent increase in viewership year-over-year.
“We’re thrilled to join the IndyCar ownership group at such a pivotal time for the sport,” said Eric Shanks, CEO & Executive Producer, FOX Sports. “IndyCar represents everything we value in live sports — passionate fans, iconic venues, elite competition and year-round storytelling potential. This investment underscores our commitment to motorsports and our belief in IndyCar's continued growth on and off the track. We’re excited to help elevate the sport to new heights across all platforms.”
Finally, someone seems to be willing to market IndyCar instead of keeping it the best kept secret in racing. https://racer.com/2025/07/31/p...-what-indycar-neededquote: Why Fox's buy-in is exactly what IndyCar needed
By Marshall Pruett - Jul 31, 2025 at 3:32 PM CDT
It’s the thing Roger Penske said would never happen. It’s also the concession Roger Penske needed to make for the IndyCar Series to reach its full potential.
A broadcast partner with vast marketing and promotional expertise, with a new and vested financial interest in the success of a racing series, is everything IndyCar had been lacking. Fox, as co-owner of Penske Entertainment, should more than solve the problem as it brings its passion for the series to bear.
It now owns a one-third share of IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indy NXT and IMS Productions, and it’s the one big step that should take the series forward in the sporting marketplace.
Penske’s purchase of the series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on approach to 2020 gave IndyCar the kind of long-term stability it needed, and his leadership and financial sacrifice during the COVID-19 pandemic is what kept the series alive.
Hailed as one of the great business minds, Penske’s success with the myriad companies he created or bought and developed under the Penske Corporation banner is where his fortune was amassed. It’s also where the nature of those businesses, all of the brick-and-mortar variety, left the new venture as owner and promoter of the IndyCar Series in a bit of a compromise.
Among the range of highly-defined muscles within Penske’s empire, innovative marketing and promotions within the sports-entertainment industry was needing development. FOX’s arrival in 2025 as the new and exclusive broadcast for the series, and today’s news of its ownership stake, has turned IndyCar’s greatest liability into a formidable strength by Fox Corporation and FOX Sports.
IS THERE ANYTHING LIKE THIS IN TOP-TIER AMERICAN SPORTS?
No, this is a unique arrangement. The NFL has massive media deals that bring in billions with telecasts spread across multiple networks, cable, and streaming, without those networks holding an ownership position in the league. The same is true for the NBA, MLB, and so on.
NASCAR is on an identical model with its races being carried across FOX, NBC, cable channels, and streaming while maintaining 100-percent ownership of its series.
Liberty Media, which owns the commercial rights of Formula 1 and MotoGP, is immensely powerful, but does not have network or cable solutions of its own to present its series.
In the IndyCar+FOX transaction, something new and different has been created between an elite sports property and a host broadcaster.
WHAT MADE PENSKE SELL NOW?
Since the purchase in 2020, the concept of taking on a strategic partner, with the ability to fill the institutional void in marketing and promoting a sporting league, has been suggested to Penske in a sustained manner by a wide array of people.
With great respect for Penske, and driven by a deep care and passion for IndyCar, there’s been a steady drum beat to find the right media ally with the means and vision to break the series out of its decades-long status as racing’s best-kept secret.
Years of attempts to increase awareness for IndyCar while facing stiff opposition from stick-and-ball sports, plus the rising imposition of Formula 1 in America and NASCAR’s well-known status as the top domestic racing series, have produced gains, but none that could be considered transformational.
IndyCar continues to move out of the sports-entertainment shadows, but at a glacial pace. Having tried to generate wider popularity for IndyCar and its drivers for multiple seasons through greater annual investments with its in-house marketing and promotion plans, the timing was right to heed those calls and welcome a proven force like Fox into the family.
WILL PENSKE CONTINUE TO SELL?
The rumored sale price of $130,000,000 for the one-third share is a significant sum, but I wouldn’t look at the number as the first step in a sell-off by Penske. Everything I’ve learned says this was a one-time opening of the books to formally align with Fox – a chance to turn a weakness into a significant advantage with the onboarding of a new ally – followed by a closing of the books.
Penske has always said, and aggressively so, that he would never sell IndyCar or IMS. Both are viewed as heirlooms – the kind of assets that stay within the family for generations – and to that end, his word holds true. A portion of the properties were sold, but at 66-percent ownership, Penske retains control of all aspects of the business.
This wasn’t an effort to pull money out of Penske Entertainment or to randomly seek capital and investors. Others, including Liberty Media, are known to have made efforts to acquire IndyCar, and in each instance, they’ve been denied.
Simply put, if Penske was looking to get out of IndyCar and IMS, there are much bigger paydays to engineer. Selling one-third to Fox Corporation is about improving the sport and raceway he loves for years to come.
HOW WILL IT WORK?
Penske Entertainment has a tenured leadership group that includes Penske Corporation President Bud Denker, CEO Mark Miles, IMS/IndyCar President Doug Boles, and others who are in charge of the day-to-day running of Penske Entertainment, IndyCar, and IMS.
No changes are expected with the existing managerial structure. However, look for additions to the Penske Entertainment board as Fox Corporation and FOX Sports become centrally involved in big-picture developments for the series and IMS. The likes of Miles and Boles won’t be sharing office space at 16th & Georgetown with new counterparts from FOX, but when it’s time to craft future strategies for the series and track, FOX Sports CEO Eric Shanks and other leaders within the FOX hierarchy will have plenty of ideas and opinions to offer.
This marriage isn’t one of convenience. It’s to make Penske Entertainment better, stronger, and more prosperous by adding Fox into the mix. Although Fox is a minority owner in the company, the last thing Penske or his executive team want to do is maintain the status quo. It’s in the creative infusion of someone like Shanks – now with a financial stake in IndyCar’s rise – where embracing change will benefit Penske Entertainment.
WHAT’S ONE BIG AREA WHERE FOX’S INFLUENCE COULD BE SEEN?
There are many ways the Penske+Fox relationship should change the trajectory of IndyCar, and in terms of internal adjustments, the most influential item on my radar is the events themselves.
By name, the entertainment side of Penske Entertainment has represented the events side of the business as promoter of the Detroit Grand Prix, and since the purchase in 2020, Penske has become the largest promoter of IndyCar events with the Long Beach Grand Prix, which it purchased during the offseason, the Indianapolis Grand Prix, Indy 500, Iowa Speedway, Milwaukee Mile and, for the first time, the upcoming season finale at Nashville Speedway.
It adds a new event in 2026 with the co-promotion of the Arlington Grand Prix, and has Mexico City on the menu as a Penske-led venture in the mix. Altogether, a growing portion of its business is concerned with creating and administering the events where its marquee series competes. And that is meant to expand with Fox and Shanks involved.
The places and years are waiting to be defined, but I continue to hear of a substantial motivation to create new, festival-like street racing events for IndyCar. NASCAR has identified the same strategy – to take its well-known series to the masses, in their metropolitan home towns, and build sizable new fan bases – as the best way to avoid stagnation.
It’s an age-old formula that was deployed domestically in the 1980 by IMSA and the CART IndyCar Series to drop its forms of racing into the laps of sports-loving audiences across the country, and it was wildly successful. In 1985, IMSA brought its sports cars, led by the GTP and GTO classes, to two street races. By 1987 it was up to five, and by 1990, seven street events among the 20 stops on the tour dominated the calendar as its popularity exploded.
CART’s IndyCar schedule for 1990 was more aggressive, with temporary circuits as seven of the 15 races were held in downtown or airport locations spanning California, Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, and two visits to Canada with Vancouver and Toronto. Nearly half of the season was spent outside of ovals and permanent road courses, and while some fans don’t care for street courses, there’s no denying their impact.
As IndyCar searches for more – and younger – fans, creating downtown parties blended with motor racing is a proven tactic that Formula 1 is using to great effect, NASCAR’s cottoned onto, and lives within its history as a pivotal direction that helped make CART the leading racing series in North America by a wide margin.
Four of its 17 races today are held on street courses and that becomes five with the arrival of Arlington. Give the new relationship some time to develop, and by 2027 or 2028, don’t be surprised if a few more Fox-led street racing festivals — modeled after the Long Beach GP with its non-stop carousel of music, food and all-day action with different types of racing — is a greater part of IndyCar’s identity.
Rather than try to retool races where ticket-buying fans are on the decline, creating unforgettable new events in major hubs is where IndyCar’s new stakeholder wants to make a stand.
WHAT’S ANOTHER AREA WHERE FOX’S INFLUENCE COULD BE SEEN?
With its new ownership stake and a heightened need to make the series more popular and more profitable, we should see a shift away from traditional thinking around how IndyCar is scheduled and presented.
The standard window of races being reserved exclusively for weekends is up for reconsideration. NFL games are played on Mondays, Thursdays, and Sunday, and occasionally on Saturdays. Run through the other leagues, and most hold games three to four times per week, and with IndyCar’s new and favored status on FOX, a new approach to when and where events are held will become a priority.
Trying to twist and contort a schedule that’s restricted to Saturday and Sundays, while also trying to avoid big conflicts with other sporting events like The Masters that are more popular and sap viewership, does not need to continue. With a racing series that it co-owns, FOX can take a fresh approach to devising a calendar that isn’t entirely limited to the same highly congested broadcast windows that often conspire against better TV ratings.
Whether it’s a weeknight, Friday nights, or some other placement where IndyCar will have the best odds of being seen by new masses of sports fans, future IndyCar schedules should have the look of optimized broadcast placements with a bare minimum of head-to-head airtimes that limit the series’ growth.
AN OVERDUE SHOT IN THE ARM
The urgent need for more and better marketing and promotion for IndyCar has been lamented for far longer than Roger Penske has owned the series. It was a daily criticism when the series was owned by the Hulman George family. It was a seething topic of frustration when the former Indy Racing League existed, and within the IRL’s rivals at Champ Car.
For most of this century, the shortcoming associated with trumpeting and amplifying the unquestioned quality of IndyCar racing – under its various names and owners – has been the anchor that’s allowed NASCAR and F1 to match or rocket past its position in the market.
A sale of 33 percent to Fox isn’t an overnight cure. But it is the most encouraging media development in decades and has the potential to remove the biggest thorn from IndyCar’s paw. The racing series Fox now co-owns, on the network where most of the country’s sports fans go to get the NFL, MLB, the early portion of the NASCAR season and more, is the home team. Just as Penske’s done when he’s signed a driver to take his IndyCar team to new heights, he’s openly engaged and signed a new partner to make the series a heavyweight contender for the first time in ages. Imagine the possibilities.[/b]
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