Kiwi NASCAR fans will miss one of the biggest races on the North American calendar this weekend with the Daytona 500 not being televised in New Zealand.
A spokesperson for Sky confirmed Daytona 500’s absence from their schedule, a statement to Velocity News saying “Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the rights to this season’s NASCAR series. However, broadcast rights change regularly, so this may be the case in this instance moving forward.”
Sky Sport has been the traditional home of NASCAR in years gone by, however viewers in New Zealand faced a similar situation just last year, having to wait 10 rounds before the sports broadcasting giants accrued rights.
With Spark Sport’s impending closure later this year, they too confirmed to Velocity News they would not be picking up rights.
“In December last year Spark announced that it would be exiting the sport streaming market so we will not be acquiring new content,” they said in a statement.
It’s a big snub for the series which has faced a resurgence in followers over the past year, the 2022 Daytona 500 estimating to have reached nearly 9 million people on Fox Sports alone in the United States .
This is an increase of 84 per cent on 2021’s numbers, but perhaps inflated because of a six hour rain delay that year.
The race begins at 8.30am this coming Monday New Zealand time, Sky Sport’s traditional home of motorsport, Sky Sport 5, instead showing a different event from Daytona at that time: A replay of the last two hours of the 24 at Daytona which took place three weeks ago.
The news comes as frustrating to fans of the series in New Zealand who face the beginning of yet another campaign unsure of whether they’ll get to see any on-track action this year.
