The 2025 IndyCar season is right around the corner.
This week marks the unofficial start of the campaign, with IndyCar Content Days in Indianapolis featuring the teams and drivers. While the season begins in earnest on March 2 at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, one of the biggest changes coming to IndyCar is a new broadcast home. FOX Sports secured the rights to IndyCar for the upcoming season, and the network has begun rolling out a massive marketing campaign during their coverage of the NFL Playoffs.
That campaign includes the newest member of their NFL broadcast team, Tom Brady.
The campaign began on the Sunday of Wild Card weekend, with this ad featuring Josef Newgarden, the winner of the two previous Indianapolis 500s:
The commercial dropped just hours before Brady called his first NFL Playoff game for FOX Sports, Sunday’s game between the Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles.
This is the first of a few commercials FOX will be rolling out during the NFL Playoffs. Upcoming spots will include drivers Alex Palou and Pato O’Ward.
When the broadcast deal was announced, expanded coverage of the IndyCar series on FOX was highlighted as a huge boost for the sport.
“The unrivaled exposure FOX will bring to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, including an additional hour of Indy 500 pre-race coverage, will prove to be a spectacular showcase for our drivers and teams,” Penske Entertainment Corp. President and CEO Mark Miles said back in December. “With FOX’s tremendous partnership and support, we’re going to bring the most competitive and compelling motorsport on the planet to a growing and massive audience. We cannot wait to raise the curtain on the 2025 season with FOX.”
“On behalf of everybody in INDYCAR, we’re so excited about the new partnership with FOX Sports,” said Newgarden. “They’ve given us so much already and I can’t wait to see what we can do together in 2025. I think we’re really going to bring INDYCAR to the masses and retell our story in a significant way. I think people are going to be really pleased with what they see. The first round can’t get here soon enough. It’s going to be a big year.”
This first ad is certainly a strong debut.
