Denny Hamlin has learned of the discontinuation of NASCAR Race Hub on FS1, and he is not pleased.
During the most recent episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin expressed sorrow that the show was ending, but speculated that it could return with a different one of NASCAR’s broadcasting partners.
“We also had news that (NASCAR) Race Hub is ending, after I think 15 years,” said Hamlin. “It was certainly convenient to be on cable. I don’t care; it’s on a sports network. Personally, I would always go into a restaurant or anything and it would be casual. … I mean, I am serious. It would replay. They always have it on FS1. So it would just rerun throughout the week, even if it wasn’t in its scheduled time slot. So I’m not entirely convinced about switching to a YouTube platform. I still think it would be preferable to have something on cable. I understand that other sports don’t have a daily show, but I believe it was definitely an asset for our sport to have, for sure.”
“My intuition says it’ll be replaced with something, whether it’s NASCAR or one of the new partners, but I don’t like leaving FS1 for an hour a week.” I don’t like it, but it’s not our choice. What I also understood was that FOX suffered a significant financial loss. They spent a lot of money each year putting that on. It was a net negative. So yes, everyone has a business to manage.”
Hamlin makes some salient points, as NASCAR Race Hub helped bring the sport to some places that wouldn’t normally watch it. However, with the loss of revenue and cutbacks across the board for many of NASCAR’s broadcasting partners, it’s cancellation isn’t exactly a surprise.
As Hamlin mentioned, perhaps one of NASCAR’s new partners in Amazon Prime Video or TNT Sports decides to pickup the show, or at least create their own version of it. That could be an interesting solution to the problem.
Regardless, NASCAR Race Hub will finish out the season, and then be on its way. We’ll see if something, if anything, takes it’s place when the void is created by the decision later this season.
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