Daytona 500

The Daytona 500 is a 500-mile-long (805 km) NASCAR Sprint Cup Series motor race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is the first of two Sprint Cup races held every year at Daytona, the second being the Coke Zero 400. It is one of the four restrictor plate races on the Sprint Cup schedule. The inaugural Daytona 500 was held in 1959 coinciding with the opening of the speedway and since 1982, it has been the season-opening race of the Cup series.

The Daytona 500 is regarded as the most important and prestigious race on the NASCAR calendar, carrying by far the largest purse. Championship points awarded are equal to that of any other Sprint Cup race. It is also the series' first race of the year; this phenomenon is virtually unique in sports, which tend to have championships or other major events at the end of the season rather than the start. Since 1995, U.S. television ratings for the Daytona 500 have been the highest for any auto race of the year, surpassing the traditional leader, the Indianapolis 500 which in turn greatly surpasses the Daytona 500 in in-track attendance and international viewing. The 2006 Daytona 500 attracted the sixth largest average live global TV audience of any sporting event that year with 20 million viewers.

Fox Sports (United States)

Fox Sports is the programming division of the Fox Broadcasting Company, owned by 21st Century Fox, that is responsible for sports broadcasts on the network, and its dedicated regional and national sports cable channels. The flagship entity of 21st Century Fox's Fox Sports Media Group division, it was formed in 1994 with Fox's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football League (NFL) games. In subsequent years, it has televised the National Hockey League (1994–1999), Major League Baseball (1996–present), NASCAR (2001–present), Bowl Championship Series (2007–2010), the USGA Championships (2015–present), and the FIFA World Cup (starting in 2018).

History

When the Fox Broadcasting Company launched in October 1986, the network's management, having seen how sports programming (in particular, soccer events) played a critical role in the growth of the British satellite service BSkyB, determined that sports would be the type of programming that would ascend Fox to a major network status the quickest; as a result, Fox tried to attract a professional football package to the network. In 1987, after ABC initially hedged on renewing its contract with the National Football League (NFL) for the television rights to Monday Night Football, Fox made an offer for the package at the same price that ABC had been paying at the time – about $13 million per game. However, partly due to the fact that Fox had yet to establish itself as a major network, the NFL decided to resume negotiations with ABC, with the two parties eventually agreeing to a new contract, keeping what was the crown jewel of the league's television broadcasts on that network (where it remained until 2006, when MNF moved to sister network ESPN as part of a contract that also saw NBC gain the Sunday Night Football package).

Sprint Cup Series

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (often shortened to Sprint Cup or the Cup Series) is the top racing series of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). The series is named for its current sponsor, the Sprint Corporation, and has been known by other names in the past. It was originally known as the Strictly Stock Series (1949) and shortly became the Grand National Series (1950–1970). While leasing its naming rights to R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, it was known as the Winston Cup Series (1971–2003). A similar deal was made with Nextel in 2003, becoming the Nextel Cup Series (2004–2007) and it became the Sprint Cup after Sprint acquired Nextel in 2005. The name "Sprint" refers specifically to the subsidiary of Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank which is the entitlement sponsor; sprint car racing is a separate racing discipline.

The drivers' champion is determined by a point system where points are given according to finishing placement and laps led. The season is divided into two segments. After the first 26 races, 16 drivers, selected primarily on the basis of wins during the first 26 races, are seeded based on their total number of wins and compete in the last 10 races with the difference in points greatly minimized. This is called the Chase for the Championship.

500

Year 500 (D) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Patricius and Hypatius (or, less frequently, year 1253 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 500 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Events

By place

Byzantine Empire

Britannia

Daytona Beach, Florida

Daytona Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. It lies about 51 miles (82.1 km) northeast of Orlando, 86 miles (138.4 km) southeast of Jacksonville, and 242 miles (389.5 km) northwest of Miami. In the 2010 U.S. Census, it had a population of 61,005. It is a principal city of the Deltona–Daytona Beach–Ormond Beach, FL metropolitan statistical area, which was home to 590,289 people in 2010. Daytona Beach is also a principal city of the Fun Coast region of Florida.

The city is historically known for its beach where the hard-packed sand allows motorized vehicles to drive on the beach in restricted areas. This hard-packed sand made Daytona Beach a mecca for motorsports, and the old Daytona Beach Road Course hosted races for over 50 years. This was replaced in 1959 by Daytona International Speedway. The city is also the headquarters for NASCAR.

Daytona Beach hosts large groups of out-of-towners that descend upon the city for various events, notably Speedweeks in early February when over 200,000 NASCAR fans come to attend the season-opening Daytona 500. Other events include the NASCAR Coke Zero 400 race in July, Bike Week in early March, Biketoberfest in late October, and the 24 Hours of Daytona endurance race in January.