By David Zink

When Bob Patison accepted the position of president of MAVTV American Real about four years ago, the attorney had little to no experience as a broadcast television executive.

But three years into Forrest Lucas’ endeavor to vertically integrate the motor sports genre, Patison has been a quick study in broadcast television, leading Corona-based MAVTV to quickly grow into a television network destination for everything motor sports.

Patison has led an effort to rebrand the network, produce lots of content, grow market share and expand advertising revenue.

To his credit, MAVTV has grown by leaps in bounds in a short time.

The network, which had about 4 million viewers when Lucas Oil took over in 2011, has grown to over 28 million subscribers in the continental United States and can be seen on nine major satellite and cable distributors and over 100 independently owned local distributors across the country.

As for market penetration, MAVTV is seen in more then 45 percent of the 62 million homes it’s distributed to.

“There is no other network that carries the variety of motor sports that we do or the number of hours that are dedicated to racing and automotive reality,” Patison said. “We have quickly become a destination network for motor sports with race fans and everyday gearheads.”

Not bad for a man who spent over 15 years as corporate council for Forrest Lucas and Lucas Oil Products, assisting with management responsibilities before taking the reins of MAVTV.

Lucas and Patison saw an opportunity and a contingency when rumor had it that Speed Network (a once thriving motor sports destination) would be shut down by Fox Sports in favor of Fox Sports 1, which began operations in 2013.

Lucas Oil had partnered with Speed Channel, using the network to show the stable of race content it was producing in an effort to market Lucas Oil products.

“We needed to be prepared because Speed was a big platform for Lucas Oil as an advertiser,” Patison said. “We had a lot of content and advertising on Speed (Channel) so for the sake of maintaining good marketing for Lucas Oil products, we had to have a plan.

“One of the reasons we got into MAVTV in the first place was to ensure that we always had a marketing platform to deliver our message from.”

Patison said the next step is to reach out and gain market share in places clamoring for American motor sports, markets such as Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Canada and Mexico.

“Our 10-year plan is to make MAVTV and motor sports content available worldwide,” Patison said. “We've gone through a steep learning curve, and we still have a lot to learn, but I think we're making some good decisions and hopefully they'll continue to pay off for us.”

Source: The Press-Enterprise