MavTV (short for
Maverick Television) launched on October 1, 2004, based out of
Atlanta with distribution limited to select cable companies. The network was privately held and founded by four former executives from
Showtime Networks—Steve Severn, Steve Smith, Doug Jost and Rob Stevens. It had no connections to the NBA's
Dallas Mavericks or
Mark Cuban, their owner, nor to
Maverick Television, a British
reality television production company owned by
All3Media.
Purchase by Lucas Oil and change of programming direction In October 2011, longtime partner lubricants company
Lucas Oil purchased MavTV; the company had provided and sponsored most of the network's motorsports rights even before their purchase, and the network was likely to go dark without the purchase as programming rights had deteriorated towards barter programming and heavy repeats of library content. The network was quickly reformatted away by the new management from a completely male focus towards a general family programming direction. On July 4, 2012, Lucas rebranded the network, making MavTV's name all capitalized, but with the MAV initials standing for "Movies, Action, and Variety" with the addition of films and more concert programming to the schedule, and a gradual drawdown of racing-related programming to a smaller, yet important part of the schedule to maintain its cable carriage mainly among digital sports tiers, including the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series and the Lucas Oil Pro Pulling League. The network is also advertised on the containers of many Lucas Oil products. Until 2015, MAVTV also aired classic programming such as
The Lone Ranger,
Starsky & Hutch, and
Bonanza, along with films. However, the recovery of the network's revenues under Lucas Oil, along with heavy competition in the classic television rights race from digital over-the-air networks such as
MeTV,
Antenna TV and movie networks like
Movies! and
getTV meant that the network began to draw down non-motorsports programming by the start of 2016. The conversion of Fox's
Speed to the general-interest
Fox Sports 1 also left a plethora of motorsports rights for other networks to pick up, which MAVTV took advantage of. The network also carries motorboat racing and various events from the
Federation of International Motorcycling, including
ice speedway and
motorcycle speedway events.
Past programming The network's
1080i high definition feed was launched during the fall of 2008. The standard definition version of the network is downscaled from the HD master feed at the cable operator's headend level. Before Lucas Oil took over full management of the network, MAVTV carried programming such as the second season of
Rad Girls,
SpeedFreaks, ''Women's Flat Track Roller Derby
, American Tailgater
, AMA Motorcycle Racing
, Wrestlicious TakeDown
, Ultimate Combat Experience
, Bikini AllStars
and Best of the Best
. In addition, MAVTV presented the male-specific documentary series Manumentaries''. Except for existing Lucas Oil programming and the AMA, none of this programming currently remains on the network's schedule. Overnights had been filled by
music video/interactive
SMS programming from
NOYZ via a
time brokerage agreement before that company went bankrupt in early 2008.
Sports deals In 2007, MAVTV struck a deal with the
Women's Flat Track Derby Association to broadcast two of the three
roller derby finals: the
Eastern Regional Tournament (
Heartland Havoc, which was broadcast as a series of one-hour weekly episodes) and the
National Championships (
Texas Shootout). MAVTV contracted with the
Automobile Racing Club of America, the auto racing sanctioning body, to air at least 6 races in 2008, including both 100-mile dirt races at the
Illinois State Fairgrounds in
Springfield, and the
Southern Illinois State Fairgrounds in
DuQuoin. SpeedFreaks hosts Kenny Sargent and Crash Gladys also appeared on episodes of the Lucas Motorsports hour. MAVTV sponsored the
MAVTV 500, the final race in the
2012 season of the
IndyCar Series, which took place at the
Auto Club Speedway in
Fontana, California. MAVTV is partnered with
King of the Cage, broadcasting their live and past Martial Arts events, as well as
Championship Wrestling From Hollywood. MAVTV did their 1st live motorsports event, the Lucas Oil Challenge Cup featuring the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series on October 27, 2013, from Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park. They will also do live coverage of the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals, one of the biggest midget car races every year. The East Bay Winter Nationals from the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series and all Moto1 rounds of the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motorcross championship in 2014. They will also cover several King of the Cage MMA events live in 2014. In 2014, MAVTV partnered with professional road racing series Pirelli World Challenge to air the Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car Championship. In 2017, MAVTV signed a multi-year deal with
ARCA Racing to bring almost all their races live or broadcast at later time/date. Outside the races broadcast from
Fox Sports. In 2018, Signed a deal to show highlights of
Tony Stewart All Star Circuit of Champions Also MAVTV expanded its coverage of
ARCA Racing with 11 of its 12 races broadcasting live In 2019, MAVTV is showing all of its
ARCA races its broadcast live for the first time In 2024, the European racing series
DTM switched from Motortrend to the Racer Network. Since then, the races have been broadcast live or as highlights.
Movie deals On April 27, 2010, MAVTV signed a deal with
Sony Pictures giving them access to select titles from Sony's film library. The deal was part of MAVTV's programming strategy to expand its schedule and abandon their former all-male programming direction. The network added films from the Warner Bros. library in July 2012. These deals eventually expired though as mentioned above, and MAVTV eventually went to an all-motorsports schedule by the start of 2016.
Acquisition by Racer On March 27, 2025, MAVTV was acquired by motorsports media company
Racer, which quickly made its mark by rebranding the channel as
Racer Network the same date, with a new imaging campaign to come to reinforce the brand. ==Personnel==