INDIANAPOLIS—Drivers Robert Shwartzman, Louis Foster and Nolan Siegel won’t be the only Indianapolis 500 rookies when they get the green flag May 25 to start this year’s race from the Brickyard. Fox Sports, too, is making its inaugural run at the race—only from the production point of view.
“You know, you don't get too many opportunities in your career to be a part of something like this where the rights have been with one broadcaster for so long, and then you get to drop in and put your mark on it,” said Fox Sports Executive Vice President of Technical and Field Operations Michael Davies.
(Coverage of the 2025 Indianapolis 500 begins on Fox stations at 10 a.m. EDT with the pre-race show. Race coverage begins at 12:45 p.m. Coverage is also available on Fox Deportes and can be streamed via the Fox Sports App and at www.foxdeportes.com.)
This year’s 109th Indianapolis 500 is the first time Fox Sports will produce and televise the race under a deal announced in June 2024 awarding exclusive media rights for the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES races to the broadcaster.
‘Mini-Super Bowl’
While Fox Sports is new to the Indy 500, it has a long history of covering premiere motorsports like the Daytona 500, and other massive sporting events, such as the Super Bowl.
“Indy kind of seems like a mini Super Bowl to me, but it's different, though, because, we've got a production partner here,” said Davies. “That’s Indy Motor Sports [IMS] Productions, and Kevin Sublette [president of IMS Productions] and those guys.”
Like other NTT INDYCAR SERIES races this season, Fox Sports will produce coverage of the race out of IMS Productions’ mobile production units. For the Indy 500, it will rely on five, recently rebuilt IMS trucks—collectively known as HD5—and Game Creek Video’s Encore, a compliment of three 53-foot expando production trailers, said Davies.
Broadcast Sports Inc. (BSI) has also arrived in Indianapolis with the same RF truck used by CBS Sports during the recently concluded PGA Championship in Charlotte, N.C., he said.
The broadcaster will produce the race entirely on-site, foregoing the use of off-site resources for replay and graphics as it has done for other events. “Sometimes, when you’re dealing with this kind of show, especially as a one-off, we’ll just bring everybody on-site,” said Davies.
“Maybe next year we’ll get cute with it, but for now, we are good old-fashioned, dyed in-the-wool on-site here.”
Fox Sports will draw on the experience of IMS Productions covering the race while adding a few of its own special touches.
Special Touches
There are a few noteworthy broadcast and production firsts for this year’s Indy 500. Fox Sports and IMS Productions will produce the race in 1080p HDR and distribute upconverted 4K—a first for the race—to capture “all of the race’s color and pageantry,” said Davies, adding that the HDR color space is “something that’s a vast improvement.”
Fox Sports is deploying six “driver’s eye cameras” at the Indy 500 this year—a first for the race. While these types of cameras have been used in Formula 1 and Formula E racing, their addition to the production of the Indy 500 will bring a first-time driver’s perspective to fans of the race, said Davies.
“The driver’s eye camera is turning a lot of heads,” he said. “We did it for NASCAR, but it’s a lot better in the open cockpit models because there’s not as much gak in front of the cameras. We think it is very compelling at Indy because it gives you an inside-out look at exactly what the driver is seeing.”
The cameras, believed to be the smallest currently in use in sports production, will be part of the helmets worn by drivers Josef Newgarden, Scott Dixon, Alex Palou, Will Power, Marcus Ericsson and Felix Rosenqvist.
Beyond simply capturing the track, this camera will give fans a view of the car’s wheel, controls and the hands of the six drivers as well as the “sheer vibration” of the car as it powers around the track, he said.
The broadcaster is bringing many of the production elements commonly used in its NASCAR and other motorsports coverage to Indianapolis. A decade ago, it pioneered its use of drones in motorsports with NASCAR.
For the Memorial Day Weekend race, it again is partnering with Beverly Hills Aerials, which will deploy two airborne platforms at the Indy 500, said Davies.
Beverly Hills Aerials has modified a DJI Inspire drone, outfitted with a broadcast camera that Fox can paint remotely to match its other cameras. The drone specialist has received a waiver to fly over people at the race in a safe manner, said Davies.
The company also will deploy an FPV racing drone, which Fox uses widely in its NASCAR coverage and is capable of achieving speeds between 80 mph and 90 mph to “show how fast these cars are going,” he said.
Fox Sports senior vice president of graphic technology and integration Zac Fields and his team will be adding augmented reality graphic elements and a head-up display (HUD) depicting a virtual dashboard in some cars. The Fox Sports Ghost Car, a familiar NASCAR visual, made its Indy debut last weekend during qualifying sessions, he said.
“What Fox brings is some of this new technology that we’ve invested in like the SMT [SportsMEDIA Technology] vectors that allow us to do things like positioning boxes like we use in NASCAR, to do the Ghost Car and pointers and HUD display.
“There's a fair amount of graphical firepower here, and Zac's been hard at work to make sure we can get all the data that is supplied by IMS Productions and manifest graphics for our audience,” said Davies.
Maiden Voyage
While Fox Sports will deploy many of the tools and technical innovations that have elevated motorsports coverage—most notably NASCAR, Davies and his team are approaching production of the Indianapolis 500 with a deep respect for the historical context of the race.
“We try to be humble in terms of coming to a place like this that’s been racing for over 100 years,” he said. “We're all newbies here, and we're taking the experience we have from doing NASCAR and other motorsports, but combining it with just the way that Fox does big events,” he said.
“You know, we are relying on the experience of our partners at Indy Motor Sports Productions. Those guys are awesome and really are the engine of race coverage.”
