Turner Sports and TNT have greenlit a reprise of this past NASCAR season’s July 7 Wide Open Coverage race, a television first that featured no commercial interruptions but used branded content for 10 advertisers that appeared sporadically via a small on-screen window.

Trish Frohman, executive vp of Turner Sports sales, said Sprint will definitely return for next year’s July 5 telecast, while talks are underway with the other marketers including Auto Zone, DirecTV, Ford, Goodyear, Miller Brewing Co., Principal Financial Group, Subway and Toyota. Coca-Cola has replaced Pepsi as the on-track sponsor of next year’s race, which will be known as the Coke 400. Turner is also talking with Coke about becoming TV sponsor of the race and buying branded spots in the telecast.

All the branded spots, as in this year’s telecast, will be produced by Turner Sports Creative Sports Services, in partnership with the clients. Each will run between 30 seconds and two minutes apiece. The Wide Open Coverage concept was a hit with viewers because without national commercial breaks, racing fans got to see more than an hour of additional live coverage during the three-hour telecast.

This year’s Pepsi 400 was not only ad-supported cable’s highest-rated program of that week among adults 18-49 and 25-54, but also the top-rated show on July 7 in those demos in all of television, including broadcast. The telecast drew 3 million adults 18-49 and 6.1 million viewers overall. Frohman said the number of advertisers will remain at 10, with the format basically remaining the same.

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