Technically, NASCAR does not need a deal with a majority or unanimous number of teams to have a new charter agreementgetty images
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The Race Team Alliance invited NASCAR to a group meeting on Saturday in Daytona to discuss the charter system negotiations, but NASCAR declined, citing its ongoing process of meeting with owners individually, according to people familiar with the matter. Team executives still met yesterday despite NASCAR declining to attend, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. The AP last night reported the teams had hired antitrust attorney Jeffrey Kessler to advise them.
The disagreement in meeting format is the latest indication that the sides remain far apart from a deal to collectively strike a new agreement that would begin in 2025. Technically, NASCAR does not need a deal with a majority or unanimous number of teams to have a new charter agreement; teams are independent contractors who don’t own NASCAR.
However, the sport has been moving in certain ways toward operating more like a traditional stick-and-ball league, and the original charter system did grant them some governing rights, including getting quarterly Team Owner Council sessions with NASCAR. NASCAR continues to attend those. At least for the moment, teams are currently sticking together, with the suggestion being that the sanctioning body needs to strike a joint deal agreeable to all of them in order to move forward in good faith as an industry.
There are 15 teams in the RTA, and principals from all 15 of those organizations were in attendance at the meeting, a source said. The specific deal points they wished to discuss were unclear, though. But broadly, at least some of the teams don’t feel NASCAR’s offer has been good enough in the total sum of incremental media revenue gains that they will get along with more ancillary things like gambling revenue.
Like many sports, media revenue is by far NASCAR’s most lucrative stream of money. By the end of this year, Fox Sports and NBC Sports will have paid NASCAR and its industry $8.2B from 2015 through 2024, and the sanctioning body has another $7.7B now slated to come in from 2025 through 2031 with an expanded set of media companies.
Along with the new media cycle that will begin in 2025, NASCAR wants to move into a new era of its business entirely with changes like having a more unified digital media ecosystem across teams and paying drivers directly to promote the sport away from the track.
While it’s not a certainty, most team and NASCAR executives currently remain confident that a deal will likely be struck in time for next year’s Daytona 500. But at this stage, a deal appears to be months off as frustrations rise, sources have said in recent weeks.
The original charter system agreement was for nine years from 2016 through 2024.
