ESPN Deportes Radio NASCAR analyst, Andres Agulla Credit: ESPN

ESPN, MRN to provide Spanish broadcasts

With the recent agreement between ESPN Deportes Radio and the Motor Racing Network, Spanish-speaking NASCAR fans now have a place to hear NASCAR news.

	From left, Andy Petree, Rusty Wallace and Jerry Punch Credit: ESPN
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NASCAR, likewise, has another inroad to a large, vocal and as yet untapped market that will be much more important next year when Juan Pablo Montoya starts the season at Daytona.

The five-year agreement between ESPN Deportes Radio, the Spanish-language arm of ESPN Radio, and the Motor Racing Network calls for up-the-minute NASCAR news and information on all three of NASCAR's premier series -- Nextel Cup, the Busch Series and the Craftsman Truck Series -- as well as related radio programming.

ESPN/ABC, which will come back to the NASCAR arena next season as a replacement for NBC, already has assigned exclusive rights to ESPN Deportes TV for NASCAR programming, said Traug Keller, senior vice-president, ESPN Deportes, ESPN Radio.

"This agreement clearly underscores ESPN's leadership in bringing NASCAR racing to the Hispanic community," Keller said. "Our current television agreement grants ESPN Deportes TV exclusive rights to NASCAR programming and it was a natural next step to expand the relationship to radio. With the growing popularity of NASCAR racing in the Hispanic community, we look forward to becoming the primary destination for the Spanish-speaking fans."

With the radio and TV rights, ESPN Deportes will have access to vast amounts of content for both broadcast and telecast beginning with the 2007 season. If it's NASCAR, and it's in Spanish, you'll hear it on ESPN Deportes Radio.

David Hyatt, president of MRN, said the agreement gives NASCAR a tool with which to activate in the ever-growing Spanish-speaking segment of the fan base.

"Thanks to this groundbreaking agreement, Latino NASCAR fans now have a radio home for exclusive daily NASCAR race updates, news and information," Hyatt said. "ESPN Deportes will help enhance the sport's appeal and build a stronger and more diverse fan base for NASCAR racing. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with ESPN Deportes Radio, and will work closely with them to make this relationship a long-term success."

ESPN Deportes officials were likewise ecstatic about the agreement.

"This announcement is cause to celebrate for a variety of reasons," Oscar Ramos, senior director, general manager, ESPN Deportes Radio said. "By adding NASCAR content we have made a tremendous enhancement to our motorsports programming lineup. This is also a great first step in the effort for ESPN Deportes Radio and MRN Radio to jointly provide more NASCAR content to a marketplace that has historically been underserved."

While Formula One, Champ Car (the former CART) and Indy Car (the Indy Racing League) have long been under agreements with radio networks in differing languages, this is the first for NASCAR.

Up to now, there's been little call for it, but with Montoya's arrival, all that changed.

Montoya, from Columbia, is a favorite son of Latino race fans and has been able, with limited success to act as a successor of sorts to the immensely popular Ayrton Senna da Silva, the Formula One driver who was killed in a crash at San Marino in the mid-1990s.

Though Senna was from Brazil, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking peoples flocked to him as their racing hero. Montoya, with his success at Williams and then McLaren, took over that spot after Senna died.

With ESPN Deportes on-line and ready to relate, NASCAR can now tailor its message with a much greater accuracy than was to be had previously.

Latino racing heroes are among the most popular drivers in history, such as the late Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina, Emerson Fittipaldi and Senna from Brazil, and the brothers Rodriguez, Pedro and Ricardo, from Mexico.

The Rodriguez brothers, primarily sports car and open-wheel racers, are immortalized in Mexico by the racing circuit that bears their name in Mexico City -- site of the NASCAR Busch Series events held there the past two seasons.

Mexican drivers Carlos Contreras and Michel Jourdain Jr. have been active for several years in NASCAR's Busch and Craftsman Truck divisions.

ESPN's much-ballyhooed return to its NASCAR roots -- the network, along with TNN, helped build NASCAR into a TV powerhouse -- is good for NASCAR in that it offers so many outlets for the sport.

ABC, ESPN's parent company, is a division of the Walt Disney Co., and ESPN Deportes is an outgrowth of the original ESPN International division founded in the mid-1990s from ESPN's Bristol, Conn. headquarters.

Now that the agreement is signed, sealed and delivered, all that remains is developing the content in such a way as to best appeal to Latin-American race fans.

ESPN has to figure out a way to become, in the words of SportsCenter ace Dan Patrick, "en fuego."