Fox Sports activities could greatest be recognized for exhibiting Nationwide Soccer League match-ups and Main League Baseball video games, however one main advertiser hopes the outlet will get some recognition for an uncommon form of canine race.

Oscar Meyer plans to launch a brand new “Wiener 500” as a part of Fox Sports activities’ protection of the Indianapolis 500, and hopes racing followers will go alongside for the experience. The competition has six Oscar Meyer Wienermobiles racing each other on the identical observe because the car-racing extravaganza. The competition shall be streamed reside on Friday, Might 23 at 2 p.m. japanese on the Fox Sports activities app and throughout Fox Sports activities’ social-media accounts dedicated to protection of the race. Fox may even present highlights from the Wienermobile race throughout its pre-game present on the Fox broadcast community.

The Wienermobile race helps Oscar Mayer, “a strategy to actually personal the kickoff of summer season and to ensure we’re pushing our product to be prime of thoughts for people when they’re desirous about firing up these grills,” says mentioned Kelsey Rice, model communications director for the meat firm, which is a part of Kraft Heinz, throughout an interview.

Oscar Mayer has marketed in sports activities programming previously, even going as far as to sponsor the Tremendous Bowl halftime present in 1996 and 1997. However the firm has, like lots of the nation’s consumer-products giants, historically put a major chunk of its advert {dollars} into extra typical media roosts like primetime TV reveals. Within the streaming period, nonetheless, sports activities programming has turn into more and more essential to entrepreneurs from all classes, desperate to align their pitches in codecs that proceed to attract broad, simultaneous viewing. To do this, they need to play a brand new recreation that makes them a much bigger a part of the group on the observe or on the sphere.

“We wish to present everybody that Oscar Mayer scorching canine for everybody, together with sports activities followers,” says Rice. “So we needed to point out up in that area in an genuine manner, in a manner that feels actual to them.” The manager declined to supply specifics concerning the model’s relationship with Fox Sports activities, however indicated that the partnership contains paid promoting. Oscar Mayer additionally has a relationship with Indianapolis Motor Speedway that makes it the official scorching canine of the five hundred.

Sports activities followers are getting hungrier for behind-the-scenes content material tied to their favourite form of play. Amazon, Netflix and different streamers have helped a programming area of interest that offers viewers appears at what occurs to a staff or league when gamers aren’t on digital camera or on the sphere of play, which may enhance the curiosity of sports activities followers within the Oscar Mayer contest. The corporate wasn’t essentially impressed by that programming style, says Rice, who notes the corporate “is concerned about that idea.”

The race is prone to solid Oscar Mayer’s long-running Wienermobiles in a unique gentle. Six variations of the car, which usually function in several areas of the U.S. and have been created in 1936 by Carl Mayer, nephew of the model’s founder, shall be outfitted like scorching canine from numerous components of America. A “Slaw Canine” will characterize the southeastern U.S., for instance, whereas a Seattle Canine will participate on behalf of the northwestern a part of the nation.

Oscar Mayer’s sports-content maneuver comes underneath the aegis of Todd Kaplan, who joined Kraft Heinz as its chief advertising and marketing officer in July of 2024. Kaplan labored in an analogous function for PepsiCo’s beverage division, and infrequently examined gambits that married the corporate’s well-liked sodas to particular packages and content material. In 2021, for instance, Pepsi backed a brand new recreation present on Fox known as “Cherries Wild” that aimed to advertise a brand new favor of the corporate’s flagship soda.

Just one Wienermobile can win this 12 months’s race, however there could also be new alternatives down the road. Oscar Mayer’s Rice says the corporate wish to make the competition “an actual annual occasion, one thing that actually kicks off summer season for the model.”