Grand Prix weekend gets thumbs up from broadcasters

Motorsport promoter Speed Works is confident its decision to stream its events live on the Spark Sport platform, with a free to air highlights package on Three, is the right one.

It follows confirmation by both broadcasters that the 66th New Zealand Grand Prix was a big hit for their audiences.

Spark Sport had a large captive audience that rivalled that of its Formula One events and it’s promotional campaign worked well too, with average views of its video ads on Facebook topping 30,000.

Three – who showed highlights of the event on it’s free to air CRC Motorsport Show – have also said it was the GP package the top performer in its television time slot on the afternoon it was shown. Internationally, the event was streamed live on Motorsport.TV and was also one of the highest trending and viewed streams both on the day and immediately afterwards.

“We’re delighted with this news from our partners and it is an indication that this is the way to go with domestic motorsport coverage,” explained Speed Works Geoff Short.

“We were also super impressed with Spark Sport’s active support over the weekend as a partner. They had digital media experts on hand to supplement the broadcast with their own campaigns and we were thrilled they were so helpful and enthusiastic in their support. It worked very well and of course, was a thrilling Grand Prix and weekend to get the relationship underway. We’ve never had this degree of support so we are optimistic that we are going in the right direction with broadcasting, for a variety of reasons.”

The next livestream on Spark Sport will be at the Castrol TRS final weekend at Manfeild Circuit Chris Amon. It’s another busy motorsport weekend for Speed Works with NAPA Central Muscle Cars, Best Bars Toyota 86, Racer Products V8s, TradeZone GTRNZ, Pirelli Porsches and a host of other categories on a packed schedule.