After NASCAR announced its new TV deal yesterday, it
must now "convince the Winston Cup tour's car owners that
they'll be equitable in sharing the money," according to
Mike Mulhern of the WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL. Owners "were
quick yesterday to begin making their case for a bigger
share of the pie." Under the current payout rules, the
France family Int'l Speedway Corp., with 18 of 36 Cup races
in 2001, will bring in about $130M of the annual $400M;
NASCAR, privately owned by the France family, will bring in
$40M; Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc., with nine of
the 36 races, will bring in about $65M; the tour's other
promoters, with nine Cup dates, will share $65M, and the 45
"or so regular Cup teams would" split about $100M, earning
on average of about $2M a year, with "winning teams getting
a much bigger proportion." Mulhern writes that Mike Wells,
who handled some of ESPN's NASCAR production, is "expected
to move" to NBC, and there is "some question about what"
ESPN Producer Neil Goldberg "may do" (W-S JOURNAL, 11/12).
DRIVERS QUOTEBOARD: Driver Jeff Gordon: "I was a little
surprised with NBC. They haven't even done a Winston Cup
race. This is the first one this weekend (Homestead), but
they're at the top of the class if you look at what they do
in sports." Darrell Waltrip: "One of the things that we're
all going to have to get accustomed to is when someone has
that much interest in what we're doing, they're probably
going to have a whole lot of say over what we do and how we
do it" (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 11/12). Dale Earnhardt: "This
puts us in line with other major league sports. It should
have happened sooner" (Newark STAR-LEDGER, 11/12).
