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The National Hot Rod Association is moving to the cloud to get its races out to fans faster than ever
Sony’s OTT solution, Ven.ue, NHRA.tv is now available across multiple platforms on the web, iOS, Android, Roku and Apple TV. NHRA is currently working on providing original content for that channel beyond its race coverage, including a studio show. The NHRA has also experimented with bringing in content from other sources, like ANDRA, the Australian National Drag Racing Association. The channel has a growing audience in other countries, including Australia, Sweden, Germany and the Middle East. The OTT channel is currently subscription based, but the NHRA is aiming for on-demand, transaction-based content in the future, for those who want to see a specific clip or access a moment from the organisation’s vast archive.
ubbed the largest car racing organisation in the world, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) oversees drag racing across North America. Founded in 1951, it has over 40,000 members. A couple of years ago, the NHRA launched an OTT offering. The channel, originally called All Access, featured a simple live stream of everything happening at national drag race venues, including announcer commentary and coverage of every race on the track. The streaming service soon became incorporated into the NHRA’s in-venue big-screen content, with a resulting boost in content quality. At the start of the past season, the channel was rebranded as NHRA.tv. With
The NHRA developed a partnership with Sony through using Sony’s Ci media cloud platform. During the 2015-16 race season, the NHRA renegotiated its linear TV distribution relationship with Fox Networks and, in doing so, decided to bring all its production in-house. “It was the only way we would have control over our messaging and content,” says Mike Rokosa, NHRA technology executive. “And it’s what started the process of building out our own production capabilities in our offices in California. With that came the necessity of building a library, which was almost all videotape – some film – sitting on shelves. “We started by trying to band-aid up a hardware solution, but found pretty
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