Opinion: Super GT’s international broadcast situation is an embarrassment
- Tarun Suresh
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
Written by Tarun Suresh, Edited by Pranav Sharma
In 2019, Motorsport.tv obtained broadcasting rights to Super GT and has been broadcasting the series on its website and app with English commentary since. However, in December last year, the streaming platform announced it would be shutting down a month later in January 2026. While some of the content was shifted to the Autosport website, live broadcasts, including Super GT and Super Formula, were discontinued.
This has left Super GT with no English-language broadcast this season. Well, except for one. RACER+ has taken up the void created by the now-defunct Motorsport.tv website and appears to have obtained the broadcasting rights.
But there is a catch. The RACER+ subscription costs a whopping $99.99 annually and $19.99 USD if you’re going for a monthly subscription. For context, that’s the same monthly subscription price as Netflix, and one dollar more than the Disney+ one (considering prices in the US). That being said, the annual subscription is considerably cheaper than other streaming sites.
Even if you can afford to dish out 100 dollars a year for Super GT, there are two even bigger catches. For now, they broadcast only the races. Qualifying and practice sessions are not being broadcast. It doesn’t end there; the broadcast is only available in the US and Canada. A majority of the global fanbase will not be able to watch the broadcast (legally, at least).
It is also worth mentioning that the RACER+ subscription is not free of advertisements. Adverts are common during the live stream, airing every five to 10 laps. Some of the adverts also seem to be from shady supplement and real estate companies, which do not really paint Super GT in a good light.
If you’re a fan who’s fine with watching a Japanese-language broadcast, that’s not possible either, as J Sports, the Japanese broadcaster for Super GT, is not available anywhere outside the island nation. That being said, the race replay (with Japanese commentary) is posted on the Super GT YouTube channel a few weeks after they take place, and will probably continue this year as well.
The frustrations don’t end there either. To date, there has been no official statement from the GTA about this, not even an acknowledgement. The only ways one would know about Super GT moving to RACER+ and it being region-locked is if they just happened to stumble across the website or saw journalist extraordinaire Jamie Klein’s tweets on the matter, which is how the news originally broke.
It is baffling as to why a series that seemed to be pushing for a larger international audience — as evidenced by its commitment to a Race at the Sepang International Circuit and its occasional social media posts and YouTube videos in English — just abandons its international audience.
This is a massive shame, because Super GT is a fantastic racing series with incredibly close racing, especially in the GT300 class. Every time I watch a race, I am thoroughly entertained, dare I say more than any other class of racing. It is also a championship I constantly recommend to friends, perhaps even to an annoying extent.
I am not the only one frustrated by this; many people online have expressed their anger over this, and many have called it out like it is: it feels the GTA does not care too much about its international audience.
It doesn’t even seem like they care about the drivers either, because according to Klein, who was on track at the event, the drivers were left uninformed about the lack of a truly international broadcast. Klein put out a post on X that read: “It was painful having drivers asking me in the run-up to the Race how their loved ones and friends could watch them in action, only to have to tell them they couldn’t. Hope history repeats itself, and it's all sorted by Golden Week!”
Among the many who expressed their frustration were many from the driver camp. International drivers Sacha Fenestraz, Bertrand Baguette, João Paulo de Oliveira, Giuliano Alesi and Niklas Krutten all held up their phones with messages calling for an accessible international broadcast during the official broadcast before the Race.
Fenestraz, ahead of the practice session on Saturday, voiced his concerns through a post on X: “What a shame that [Super GT] hasn't yet confirmed or signed any deal to broadcast their amazing races in other parts of the world and not only Japan and the USA.... 2026 and with today's technology this should be done and broadcasted in the easiest way possible. 'like Super Formula' I hope they find a solution as soon as possible…”
Interestingly, Fenestraz mentions Super Formula. What have they done now that Motorsport.tv is defunct? Well, since 2023, they have had their own streaming service, SFgo, where they broadcast all races in both English and Japanese.
After Motorsport.tv shut down, they continued with the English broadcasts on SFgo. SFgo is not exactly the perfect streaming service, but at least we get broadcasts along with additional features like driver onboards and radios, tyre temperature information, and live telemetry, among others, that somewhat justify the roughly 10 USD a month price tag.
This is not the first time in recent history that Super GT has lacked an international English-language broadcast. From 2014 to 2017, the series was broadcast on Nissan/NISMO TV for free and with English commentary from Formula One TV Tech Talk host Sam Collins.
However, a deal could not be reached for 2017, after which the English broadcasts ceased.
For a brief period in 2018, Jenson Button, who was having a go at the series post-retirement from Formula One, broadcast the series with English commentary on his YouTube channel. He had to pay out of pocket for the live streams and could not continue with it for 2019.
Multiple drivers, including 2017 Drivers’ Champion Nick Cassidy and Button, voiced their anger at the lack of an international broadcast. A tweet from Button read: “I tried last year, boys, with my YouTube channel, but don’t want to pay out of pocket again. I thought GTA would see the benefits of that exposure, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s a shame because SuperGT is possibly the most exciting racing to watch on the tele.”
It was after this that Motorsport.tv obtained the broadcasting rights and live-streamed the series from Round 2 of the 2019 season with English commentary.
As Fenestraz mentioned in his tweet, in 2026, it is incredibly simple to set up a broadcast with commentary and have it be easily accessible. The GTA can replicate what IMSA and SRO are doing and stream it for free on YouTube outside of the US and Canada, or have its own streaming service like Super Formula, although that would cost a steep price to set up and maintain and probably will not be feasible for the next round.
As a fan, I really hope this is not history repeating itself and Super GT sort things out for the future from Round 2 onwards, but until then, it looks like the GTA have not changed much since 2017 and don’t see the potential in the hundreds and thousands of international fans that truly do love the sport.
