LOS ANGELES: The Fox TV Group has cut a deal to cover the latest rage in auto racing, the drift Grand Prix. Drift racing grew out of a grassroots technique in Japan by which drivers oversteer and slide through turns on all four tires. Stock, street-legal cars are raced on arena tracks, including some U.S. venues this year. The D1GP, as it’s called, will begin May 2 at the Anaheim Stadium near California’s Disneyland.
The Fox TV station group is set to televise each of the D1GP USA Championship Point Series races, sometime in the fall “adjacent to a high-profile sporting event,” the racing association said. Terms of the deal, announced by D1GP, were not disclosed, though it likely was not comparable to the rights for more widely followed sporting events in the United States.
The coverage gives new and greater exposure to the sport. The 27 Fox owned-and-operated stations reach around 45 million homes—the largest potential audience ever for drift racing.
“We are excited to have the D1GP USA Championship Points Series as part of our program schedule in 2009,” said Chris King of the Fox Station Group. “This HD content is highly entertaining as well as being targeted at a demographic audience which we believe to be a strong asset to our broadcasting operations.”
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