First of all, let's get this out of the way, right off the top. TSN and TSN+ screwed up this weekend, and I mean badly. This is truly unacceptable almost a year in to the TSN+ project.

 

I'm still a subscriber to, and supporter of, TSN+, and ultimately think it will be good for racing fans, but they can't have another weekend like this. TSN is burning up any good will it has with racing fans in an awful hurry. 

 

It started through the week with the TSN+ schedule not showing any of the practice sessions for Indy Car on Friday and Saturday, which was eventually resolved and all the practice sessions were available for TSN+ subscribers. 

 

This was followed by missing the entire TSN+ schedule for Saturday and Sunday, and while it didn't seem to affect any actual programming, it was frustrating having to search elsewhere to see schedules for Indy Car and NASCAR, then hope for the best.

If this wasn't bad enough, things were about to get worse, as TSN announced they were moving the Xfinity race to TSN+ and the Cup race to CTV2.

 

Last year, Cup and Xfinity races were shown on TSN linear, so if you were only interested in the races, or couldn't justify another subscription to yet another streaming service, you may not have subscribed to TSN+, and with no US options available to Canadians, you were completely out of luck to see the race if you weren't a subscriber. 

 

The Cup race reschedule might have been even worse. For the Xfinity race, at least you could say, rightly or wrongly, if you subscribed to TSN services, you could see the race, but that's not the case with the Cup race.

 

If you are a cord cutter, and subscribed to TSN.ca directly, which includes a subscription to TSN+, you would think you're good to go for all the major racing series this year, F1, NASCAR Cup, NASCAR Xfinity and Indy Car. This weekend, that was not the case with the Cup race only on CTV 2. So if you had no cable subscription, and like most of us no TV antenna, despite subscribing to "The Home of NASCAR" you were out of luck, you couldn't see the race. That is just not acceptable. 

 

And finally, if all the above wasn't enough, TSN+ completely messed up the start time for the Indy Car race on Sunday. The race started at 12:30 and for some reason TSN+ had it scheduled for 1:00pm and didn't adjust accordingly. And while it was available on NBC over-the-air channels, if you were a cord cutter and dependent on TSN+, then you missed the entire first heat, and the chaos that ensued, maybe the only exciting part of the whole race.

 

The first couple of issues weren't a big problem, they got solved and sorted pretty quickly and nobody missed anything, and can be chalked up to somebody made a mistake, and we got it fixed. The last 3 were a problem that can not happen again.

 

So why does this happen, all too regularly it seems, to motorsport fans?

 

I think there are a couple of main reasons for it. 

 

I think a big part of the problem we have is a complete lack of institutional knowledge about motorsports in sports media, and frankly every other media, industry and institution in Canada. What I mean by this is, outside of Tim Hauraney, I doubt anybody at TSN has been involved, in any meaningful way, with a race weekend. They don't know and understand the sport. Throughout Canada a few thousand people actively take part in motorsports, while hundreds of thousands play traditional stick and ball sports in Ontario alone. 

 

It's why we had Formula 2 logos for Indy Car races on TSN+ last year and why we consistently see posters and graphics with the wrong cars in them (https://twitter.com/marshallpruett/status/1772039184804458845), and arcane references in many articles, not written by actual motorsport media. I'll never forget the early days of the Molson Indy and reading those glossaries in the special sections the Star and the Sun used to publish and seeing the term "Balloon Foot" for a slow driver. I've been involved in racing in one way, shape or form as a driver, mechanic, instructor, car owner and media since 1985 and in those almost 40 years I have neither used, nor heard the term "Balloon Foot". Wanker, yes, Balloon Foot, not so much. 

 

Looking at Friday and Saturday Indy Car practice, I can see somebody seeing "practice" listed on the schedule, and thinking of it in terms of what they know, in their frame of reference of a hockey or soccer practice, and nobody watches those, so it doesn't make it into the TSN+ schedule. 

 

Second, at the end of the day, we also have to accept that motorsports is, for all intents and purposes, a niche sport in Canada. Hockey, football and even curling have much bigger TV audiences than racing does, and when you're in the business of selling advertising, you're always going with the programming that attracts the eyeballs. When things like March Madness come along, we're the bottom rung on the ladder, or near enough to it. 

 

(Just a quick aside, I reached out a couple of years ago to Neilson looking to sign up to get the weekly TV ratings and I was given a price of over $15,000 per year, and there was only one subscription period, from August to August. Unfortunately this was out of my budget...) 

 

So after all this, the question is, why am I still a supporter of TSN+? Also, a couple of reasons. 

 

The main reason I like the idea of TSN+ is unlike the US, we can get all the major North American racing series (F1, NASCAR Cup, Xfinity and Indy Car) in one place, by subscribing to just TSN & TSN+. Compare that to the disaster below just to watch NASCAR Cup & Xfinity in the US. If we add Rev TV and Discover Velocity (they still carry WEC) and combine that with free IMSA.tv and YouTube offerings, the value of getting almost every major racing series in the world for Canadians is pretty reasonable. 

 

(This graphic is from Kenny Wallace's Twitter account https://twitter.com/Kenny_Wallace/status/1771972207532790047 I added the CW Xfintiy part)

 

Racing is also a very difficult sport to schedule on traditional, linear TV. 

 

Every single hockey game is 60 minutes, with two 18 minute intermissions and the potential for a 5 minute overtime followed by a possible shootout. 99.9 times out of 100, a hockey game will start and finish in a 3 hour window. 

 

Motorsports is very different. We have rain delays, yellow flags, red flags and different length races. It becomes very difficult to create an exact window that races are going to fit into.

What happens when you program a race that goes long, due to rain, or red and yellow flags, and the finish is going to overlap the start of the next scheduled live sporting event, say a hockey game? Do you cut the end of the race off and got to the start of the hockey game and upset the racing fans, or do you stay with the end of the race, and join the hockey game in progress, upsetting the hockey fans? What happens when a race gets into an hours long rain delay? What programming gets bumped hours later? Or do you just not bother? Or do you put it on a tape delay the following morning during the run of SportsDesk shows? 

 

A dedicated, streaming video site solves all of those problems, provided it's set up properly. 

 

 

And to that end, there are a few things I'd like to see added, updated and upgraded on TSN+ to make it a truly winning site for motorsports fans.

 

First, eliminate the self inflicted Cup debacle from this weekend. If I have subscribed to TSN to watch NASCAR, then TSN has ensure that I can see it on a TSN property, either the linear channels, TSN 1 to 5 or TSN+. To that end, I also think TSN has to be upfront with their viewers and say straight up, there may be times when races will be bumped from the linear channels, but anything bumped will always be available on TSN+. 

 

There are also a couple of lessons TSN+ could take from F1 TV. 

 

One of the big issues right now is how long it takes to get the on-demand races posted on the site, last year taking up to 24 hours. (As of writing this at 3:00pm on Monday, the Indy Car race is still not up). F1 TV has the race up immediately after it's conclusion and TSN needs to set that as the bar that needs to be met.

 

Second, you should be able to have an option to start watching the race live, or from the beginning if you get home in the middle of a race, another great feature of F1TV and other streaming services. On Screen controls to rewind and fast forward would be a great upgrade as well. 

 

A big advantage to a streaming site is, or should be, that you no longer need a PVR and there is no danger that you forget to set one. Whenever you come home, you should just be able to watch the race. That shouldn't be up for debate. 24 Hours to post a race on demand is unacceptable. 

 

Another addition I'd love to see in the case of delayed races, especially lengthy rain delays, would be a re-start notification, so the app will notify you on your phone when the race is set to restart. 

 

There are probably a number of other upgrades and features that would likely improve the experience, these are just a few off the top of my head, that should be no-brainers.

 

This weekend was a major failure for TSN and TSN+ and hopefully it's a one off situation, it really should be pretty easy to solve what went on.

 

I know a lot of people already have a ton of streaming services they subscribe to, and nobody is happy to have to pay more, but $80 a year isn't a huge price, and if you are a fan of other sports as well, it's really not a bad deal. 

 

If you don't have a streaming set up already in place, as a racing fan, you're missing out on a ton of racing, and it's no longer difficult or expensive to do. Streaming is the future, don't get left behind for something as cheap as a $40 Chromecast plugged into a a HDMI port.