Winston Cup live on uk satellite in '03 :)

[Ian-S]

Just got this back from the North American Sports Network, they are an additional subscription channel on Sky Digital, cost £9.99 month extra.

Dear Ian

Thank you for taking the time to contact us at NASN. It is very important to
us to receive feedback from you and we continue to work hard to improve NASN
in all respects. In response to one of the specific enquiries that you
raised, I hope that the information below will help to answer your question.

MOTOR RACING ON NASN

We are thrilled to have secured the rights to the premier NASCAR racing
series, The Winston Cup. Almost all the races will be shown live in
primetime, including the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400, the Pepsi 400 and
the Ford 400. There are 37 races in all, from February all the way through
to November. We will also be showing the NASCAR's Craftsman truck series
plus highlights.

At the moment, we have no plans to show CART, Indy Car, or Champ Car Racing,
as we understand that these rights are held by other broadcasters in the UK.

Sundays will not be the same again, BTC & DTM Live on Motors and finally some decent nascar coverage instead of a weeks delayed shyte - yiiipppeeee

[muggle not]

Sounds like great news for Nascar fans in the U.K. The popularity of Nascar will quickly spread and possibly help increase the fan base of ASCAR.

[Ian-S]

just a shame we have to pay £9.99 a month for it, but of course that's only £3 a race and in comparison to other subscription channels, great value for money!

btw, no I don't work for them (most people will know who I am anyway) but i am a big nascar fan and was well ****ed off at eurosport for their "we hold the rights but won't show it cos the races are too long" attitude

I's much rather pay the tenner than miss half the race looking for the feed in the offchance of them linking it in the clear.

[Asp]

For us cheapskates - will Eurosport still have rights to higlights? Anyone know?

[Ian-S]

I don't see why not.

Eurosport hold the European rights to live and highlights until the end of '03, so one would imagine they have off-loaded/sold/given the live feed to NASN

[Roselady3]

I just think that it is quite cool that all my buds acrossed the big puddle will be able to see what we see. I hope they let you have our commentators also, from my understanding what you have had for commentators has been pretty rotten. Looking forward to discussing racing with Ya'all!

[Ian-S]

@Roselady: Yea gonna be great

Carlton Kirby and Martin Haven are good in their own right, but there's nothing compared to those crazy lot at Fox and NBC - I was lucky enough to catch 90% of the Busch and about 10% of the WCS races live last year and must say that apart from Walltrip's "bogaty booooooggggggggaaaaaty boooooooggggggaaaattttttyyyyyy" (Crazy guy!) I do prefer the way "the show" is presented on NBC.

I've been checking out some of NASN's schedules and I'm not really sure how many races we'll actually get live, or does NHL take a break between Feb-Nov?

Of course, they could just take advantage of the technology available to them and "dual-broadcast" two live events like Sky did with the speedway once last year

[Asp]

We've had the same commentators over here for, I'd say, at least 20 months - the problem is that it is only highlights and we do loose the flow a little without someone filling in the gaps, so to speak.

I persoanlly prefer FOX's coverage - better graphics and the commentators get on better - although I feel sorry for Mike Joy who just appears to be trying to keep some form order - with NBC I get the feeling that Wally can be a little left-out, but less this year than last year. Hey - they're all good, and I can't wait to watch some live!!

[Ian-S]

@Asp

Talking about Wally there, you reminded me of the really funny sweet situation when he did the Busch race earlier last year.

For those who ain't got a clue, apparentley during the broadcasts he chomps on some chewy sweet thing, anyway he was doing one of the races and so the others decided they were going to eat his sweets, under a caution they went to Wally on the radio (while we watched from onboard) and told him they'd nicked all his sweets, he then proceeded to pull some from somewhere and was driving around trying to unwrap this sweet, trouble was 'cos of the heat when he did get the wrapper off it melted all over him!