EXPANDED FREE TO AIR COVERAGE FOR BATHURST 1000

Supercars CEO Sean Seamer has said the free-to-air coverage of the Bathurst 1000 will be expanded to four days for this year’s event.

In 2021, the Bathurst 1000 will be run over six days rather than the traditional four, and contain no less than nine support categories.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia the event has been pushed back to December and with the increased-on track activity comes an extra day of free to air TV coverage.

Five days will be broadcast live and completely ad free on Fox Sports,” Seamer revealed. “Then we’ll be picking up Channel 7 on Thursday and Friday to lead into the weekend.”

In the past the free-to-air coverage has not begun until Friday.

In a bid to avoid the potential sweltering heat of an early December day, Seamer explained that the Bathurst 1000 will start later than usual.

However, there is no issue with time constraints or a time certain finish as Channel 7 has offered to move its evening news bulletin until later in the day.

“All we’ve done is shift the schedule back, so it is no different to what it would have been anyway,” he said.

“Channel 7 has done a really good job to move the news so it’s all about daylight and safety.

“Given it’s December, now that I’ve said it, it’s probably going to rain, but given it’s December we should be pretty comfortable with the weather.”

The Supercars free-to-air coverage moved back to Channel 7 this year after the network previously lost the rights at the end of 2014.

Seamer also confirmed that the Supercars Championship sessions would run from Thursday through until Sunday afternoon, while the supports will run on the opening two days.

“The supercar schedule over the weekend hasn’t changed significantly other than finishing the race a little bit later on the Sunday so that we can run into primetime, so a big thank you to Channel 7 for agreeing to move the news to incorporate that,” he said.

“But all of the other categories in the lead up to the weekend will be getting a lot of their practice and qualifying out of the way.

By the time you get into things on Thursday, it’s going to be action packed all the way through to 7 o’clock on Sunday night.”

The six-day event commences on November 30 before finishing with the main race on Sunday December 5.

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