Australian drag racing will continue to be on free to air television for 2014 with Sydney production house AVE and ANDRA again committing to a partnership that will see shows on SBS Speedweek, Speed Channel and available online.
The 2012/13 season saw over 30 hours of TV produced for ANDRA and almost every championship round was shown on SBS Speedweek the weekend following the event.
As well as the ANDRA Drag Racing Series, the Aeroflow Sportsman Drag Racing Championship coverage was also boosted with sportsman brackets shown on 21 out of the 30 shows, including two sportsman specials.
Though TV continues to have the lion’s share of ratings, many more views are coming through via online media with all previous episodes from the past two seasons available to view on the ANDRA website.
ANDRA CEO Malcolm Bulley said more live streaming events would become a part of the broadcast arsenal for the 2014 season.
“The challenge with TV at the moment is the increasing diversity of options people have on what they can watch,” he said. “Whereas you used to choose between five channels on TV, now there are some 20 options on free to air alone, plus pay TV and then the multitude of options the internet presents.
“With that in mind and with a couple of successful trials of streaming this past season, I think that will become another avenue for us to increase the amount of eyes we have on drag racing.
“Where ever we can find a different group of people to see drag racing, that is where we should be putting our efforts.”
One program remains for the current season with the next broadcast event to be the ANDRA Drag Racing Series opener on January 10 and 11 at Perth Motorplex.
