We didn’t see this coming when there was an update today by V8 Sleuth that Nine and Stan Sport won’t be back covering SpeedSeries next season after two seasons thanks to the recent change of media rights control back to Motorsport Australia, not Australian Racing Group who brokered the deal with Nine/Stan at the beginning of last year.
Yes, Stan will continue to show IndyCar, Formula E, World Endurance Championship, World Rally Championship & Motocross next season as per promos during the Bathurst International weekend, but there’s no SpeedSeries on this list which has the main reason as to why these question marks has been raised. But then it would also be complicated for Motorsport Australia to keep Nine & Stan onboard covering SpeedSeries when the rest of their sanctioned competitions are covered by Seven. We don’t know how the coverage will look like going forward but we expect to see more free-to-air coverage since it will either be on Seven or SBS who both don’t have their own streaming arms, although a paid component will still be the crucial (expecting to be Fox Sports & Kayo) likewise with the Nine/Stan deal in order to keep the $$$ going for all participants involved.
As said, glad SpeedSeries is growing as seen with both TCR Australia & Trans-Am competitions as well as some International flavour with the help from TCR World Tour guys over the last two weeks including the way how the coverage is spread out by having a balance of both free and paid content, which is in a better place now than it was the start of last season. Let’s hope it stays that way going forward while Nine should finally have the WWOS logo on-air if they do air live Motorsport again.
It was also great seeing Matt White covering back Motorsport over the last two years here including his recent return commentating the Trans-Am races with Matt Naulty. He too finally appeared on Nine for the first time during Nine/Stan’s debut coverage with SpeedSeries in February last year after spending half the time out of his three-decade TV career at Seven & Ten. It remains to see where he will end up next after the Nine/Stan exit other than his daily sports radio job. For now, we wish SpeedSeries including its respective categories via its teams and drivers as well as the broadcasting talent the best of luck in the near future!!
