NASCAR COO Steve O'Donnell believes a charter agreement could be in the offingtony florez
NASCAR COO
Steve O’Donnell called it the “never-ending question.” So how close are NASCAR and its teams on a charter agreement.
“We’re very close," O'Donnell said.
O’Donnell was part of a panel Wednesday at the CAA World Congress of Sports in L.A. on how to stay competitive in an ever-changing industry.
SBJ’s Adam Stern
reported in February that NASCAR has offered to extend the charter system for seven years concurrent to its new media rights agreement, citing four sources familiar with the talks. Teams were fighting for something closer to a permanent status for their version of franchises. Sources said NASCAR’s offer is to extend the system from 2025 through 2031.
“Ultimately, when our owners look at where the sports potential is in terms of all the new media partners, the balance that we do have with linear and now being able to go with the Amazons, [TNT Sports], all the opportunities we have with content, I think they get it,” O’Donnell sad. “Everyone wants to sit down and argue over who's going to split the money the right way, but ultimately we'll get to a good place.”
The original charter agreement was negotiated in 2015, the first year of NASCAR’s current 10-year media rights agreement that expires after 2024.
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NASCAR is noticeably different from major stick-and-ball leagues in that teams have no equity in the league itself and are instead independent contractors. Still, teams believe making their charters permanent should be a natural next step of the sport operating more like a league.
Charters have increased 11-fold in value since the system began. Many NASCAR team owners are in their 70s and 80s, and at least some of them believe this is their chance to lock in enterprise value that can last for their family through generations, sources say.
“The great news on our end too is you look at, I've been at NASCAR a long time, and ownership in NASCAR was always that traditional, grew up through the sport, had been an owner for 30 years,” O’Donnell said. “That is completely changing and you're seeing interest from all over to come into NASCAR. So it's a big opportunity for us. We've got to get that right.
“There's some things that'll challenge us a little bit and push us, but … ownership that is maybe not traditional to the sport is good for us. We're going to have new personalities, new businesses that'll come into the sport. So I think at the end of the day, we've talked about everybody will be a little ticked off once we get to the deal, but that'll mean it's the right way to go.”
Three people familiar with the teams' thinking all said they disagreed with O'Donnell's assessment of a deal being "very close." One of the people noted that there's meetings coming up between NASCAR and the Race Team Alliance in the next couple weeks, but that there's still significant issues that are not yet resolved.
