Amazon Prime Video has been receiving rave reviews from the NASCAR fandom for its coverage of the Coca-Cola 600 last Sunday. The broadcast quality was easily better than what Fox Sports provided through the first twelve races of the season. However, the iconic former crew chief Larry McReynolds does not think that it is fair to compare the two platforms.
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The reasoning he put forward on Door, Bumper, Clear is that a TV network has various commercial commitments to fulfill that a streaming platform like Prime Video doesn’t. He said, “We are never gonna have a broadcast where we do an hour pre-race and an hour post-race and the majority of the commercials are side-by-side. We are network television.”
“You are comparing an apple to an orange. It’s not even an apple to an orange. It’s an apple to a banana,” he compared. While his contention does carry logic to it, not every fan was satisfied with it. They felt that, even after removing the concept of commercial ads from the comparison, Prime Video’s work was largely better than that of Fox Sports in every category.
FOX vs. Prime—is that even a fair fight? pic.twitter.com/Wh9TFJcTDQ
— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) May 29, 2025
One fan responded to McReynolds on X, “Prime took the broadcast seriously & thus gave a professional broadcast whereas @NASCARONFOX consistently insults fans’ intelligence by focusing on humor & entertainment over the actual sport & the broadcast.” This was particularly evident in the Cup Series race at the Texas Motor Speedway.
Denny Hamlin’s car caught on fire during the race after an engine failure. Instead of delivering information relevant to the driver or his situation, Fox Sports’ Kevin Harvick went, “Oh! Oh! And that is second caution of the day. This one for Denny Hamlin blowing up in flames. Not the Texas barbecue the #11 team wanted to see.”
Several other such instances are what led to the frustration against the network. Another fan provided an alternate view by writing, “It’s an old media vs new media moment. Just like when Sirius launched. How many people still tune in to terrestrial radio daily, compared with digital, streaming, podcasts, etc…? The landscape is changing and the consumers should be the ones who benefit.”
One noted, “It’s more than commercials, the overall production from the video & audio side was miles better. Fox could be a lot better even with tons of ads.” McReynolds was pretty proud about the fact that Fox Sports has been doing things this way for the last quarter of a century in NASCAR. A fan brought the walls around him by commenting, “There hasn’t been a great broadcast on Fox in 25 years.”
It is evident from these reactions that the failure of Fox Sports is not due to its tryst with commericals alone. Times are changing and streaming platforms are more in sync with the younger audience. But the only way for the television networks to delay extinction is to provide race watching experiences on the same level as their competition.
