The television and radio rights to broadcast NASCAR are among the most expensive broadcast rights of any American sport, with the current[when?] television contract with Fox Sports and NBC Sports being worth around US$8 billion.
In the early days of NASCAR, sports programs like CBS Sports Spectacular and ABC Wide World of Sports would air video highlight packages of the races. These packages were typically 15 to 30 minutes long and were cut from film of the entire race, similar to video packages created by NFL Films. For major races like the Daytona 500, ABC Sports would show footage live for a certain number of laps at the beginning, then show the end of the race. A few races were shown in their entirety in the 1970s, but these were always recorded and shown days or weeks later.[citation needed]
In 1979, CBS Sports televised the 1979 Daytona 500 live from start to finish. With the introduction of ESPN in 1981, more races began being shown live in their entirety. Since 1992, all NASCAR races have been shown from start to finish, and all have been shown live since 1997. Until 2001, race tracks struck individual agreements with networks to broadcast races, but in order to capitalize on the growing popularity of the sport NASCAR announced in 1999 that television contracts would now be centralized; that is, instead of making agreements with individual tracks, networks would now negotiate directly with NASCAR for the rights to air a package of races.[citation needed]