September 17, 2013
(Article courtesy of SuperCupStockCarSeries.com)
The Super Cup Stock Car Series enjoyed national television coverage and web-based video broadcasting in 2011-2012, and those programs are still drawing an enthusiastic response from auto racing fans.
The five episodes currently airing on http://www.motorsportworld.tv/ have now surpassed a cumulative total of 100,000 viewers. The highest-rated Super Cup program to date is the 2011 telecast of the Hickory event which has drawn nearly 35,000 race fans while other Super Cup events average 20,000 per program. This is in addition to a national television audience on TUFF TV, America One Sports and Untamed Sports TV.
The viewership reported by Motorsportworld.tv is not a demographic estimate or a Nielson-style rating based on a sampling of the audience. Rather, it is a specific count of individual viewers who have watched the television program in a time frame of less than one year.
These numbers compare favorably to several other similar race series which have been online for a longer period, yet fail to pull the viewers-per-annum of Super Cup racing.
The Super Cup TV show was produced by Sopwith Motorsports Television Productions of Indianapolis, which recently cemented an agreement to provide motorsports programming to Time Warner Cable of Wisconsin. This agreement was unrelated to Super Cup, but may open new doors for the series in the near future.
“One element that was missing from our 2011-2012 Super Cup TV package was a regional carrier,” said Sopwith CEO Stephen Cox. “We had national coverage, but a lot of Super Cup fans weren't in areas that allowed them to watch it on TV so they had to turn to the internet.”
“Now that we've formed our first relationship with Time Warner and are making inroads with other major regional cable carriers, we will have a realistic shot at bringing any future Super Cup programming directly to fans in the Ohio/West Virginia/Pennsylvania area through their own cable channels. That would give the series national coverage, regional coverage and online coverage and be a much friendlier package to race teams and their local sponsors.”
Super Cup Series Director Joe Schmaling plans to bring television back to the series if the right package can be brought together. “If we can find a way to make this work,” Schmaling said, “I'd like to do it again. One hundred thousand viewers on Motorsportworld.tv is a significant number. I'm happy about that. We don't need a lot to make this happen, but somebody has to step up.”
In addition to 100,000 online race fans, networks including TUFF TV and Untamed Sports TV have openly supported Super Cup programming and welcome its return.
Future TV coverage for the series is not yet a certainty, but this much is clear – if Super Cup returns to television in 2014, a lot of people are waiting to watch it.
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