NASCAR quietly has "increased the purses for its two national developmental series while Sprint Cup purses have dropped by a tick this year," according to Bob Pockrass of ESPN.com. NASCAR Chair & CEO Brian France last year said that the sanctioning body would consider giving Xfinity Series and Camping World Truck Series teams a "bigger portion of the new television deal that went into effect this year." That "is what NASCAR has done, although it won't say by how much." In comparing the purses "for the first four tracks to what the purses for those tracks' races were last year, the only Sprint Cup race to have an increase in purse was the Daytona 500." That was up just 0.1%. However, Xfinity races are up 9.1% "with increases of $60,000 to $155,000 per race;" Xfinity purses this year generally are $1.1-1.5M (the opener was $2.66M). The truck race at Daytona was up 16.4% to $806,373, "and that was for a 32-truck field instead of a 36-truck field." There "was no Atlanta truck race last year with which to compare the earlier purse." In previous contracts, NASCAR had put 93.75% of its TV money toward Cup, 5.75% to Xfinity and 0.5% to trucks. Thus, it appears that the truck purses, "which typically ranged from $400,000 to $600,000 last year, got a significant increase as part of the new deal" (ESPN.com, 3/20).
