If you could look through the telephone lines on Tuesday, you would have seen about fifty very long faces during the final and mandatory conference call for DirecTV’s NASCAR HotPass. The leader of the new to television concept of a true inside view of stock car racing, Chris Long, broke the news to a band of faithful that HotPass was indeed dead.
I was part of the inaugural season in 2007 and I think the service was fantastic. What a great idea…take race fans (or any sports fans for that matter) really inside the goings on of the team. Can you imagine hearing the plays that are called in the huddle of your favorite NFL team? That is what HotPass brought you. The idea was so new and fresh many of the race teams were afraid of the change. Chris Long went out and sold them, and NASCAR, on the idea. It was new, it was different and it was very expensive.
I have read a lot of fan’s entries on the internet blogs and I think ninety percent of them are equally saddened by the loss of this pay service. A small few think it was too censored and having the announcers rout for the home team (their driver) was a little over board. I must admit, in the beginning I was also very skeptical about the slant of the coverage, however, I soon learned that die hard race fans want all the info they can get about their favorite team. NASCAR HotPass truly gave them an inside look not possible in any other sport.
There was never a doubt about Chris Long’s dedication to this project. DirecTV spent millions on advertising the new service. He got the sports top stars, Earnhardt and Stewart to pitch the deal. He pushed the service into HD coverage in 2008 and no expenses were spared in building the brand. In the end, the numbers just did not add up.
I will always wonder how this project would have fared if it were not just DirecTV specific. If NASCAR HotPass as a concept was sold to ALL the service providers (cable, dish network, and the others) I think it would have had a much better chance of survival. DirecTV had too small of a piece of the overall pie of race fans to make the subscriptions viable. It is not the idea that did not work….it was most certainly the cost factor and the lack of return on investment!
Ray Dunlap
Speed TV
PS: I am a DirecTV subscriber and I pay full price for the service just like everyone else.
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