2024 is the last year of the current NASCAR TV deal.
Normally, that would mean that things would more or less stay the same. Or, if one of the TV partners were leaving, there would be a possibility of using their lame-duck status to slack off. That will not be the case this time around since both FOX Sports and NBC Sports will be back in 2025 and beyond.
That doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be changes in the final year of the deal. Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced on his podcast, The Dale Jr. Download, on Tuesday (Feb. 6) that his contract with NBC expired at the end of last year. As a result, he is a free agent.
“My contract with NBC is up, it ended at the end of last year,” Earnhardt said on the podcast. “I’m currently working through what that means for me. I definitely love being in the broadcast booth and want to continue.”
Note that I said NBC and not NBC Sports. Unlike boothmates Rick Allen, Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte, whose contracts are with NBC Sports, Earnhardt’s contract was with NBC as a whole. NBC generally saw Earnhardt as more than just a NASCAR personality. They thought he could do more. In addition to race commentary, Earnhardt appeared on Winter Olympics coverage in Pyeongchang, South Korea back in 2018, hosted Lost Speedways and appeared on additional programming.
There are cascading issues that come from the lack of a deal. For example, new episodes of The Dale Jr. Download will not be uploaded to Peacock until this impasse ends, if ever again. However, for fans of the podcast, full episodes of the podcast in video form will be uploaded to Dirty Mo Media’s YouTube channel for the rest of the year, as you saw above. If Earnhardt successfully negotiates a new deal with NBC, then they’ll conceivably start up with the Peacock uploads again. The existing episodes of the podcast are still up on Peacock as of this writing, along with both seasons of Lost Speedways.
The contractual issues could result in unexpected changes for NBC Sports in the final year of their current deal. There are three possible scenarios that could emerge from this situation.
One is likely the best-case scenario for NBC Sports. That would be Earnhardt signing a multi-year contract extension prior to the start of NBC Sports’ portion of the NASCAR season in June. That would maintain the status quo and give NBC Sports a sense of continuity going into the new deal in 2025.
For what it’s worth, Earnhardt stated on the podcast that he loves being with NBC and considers it to be his TV home. Based on his comments and the tone that he took on the podcast, this scenario seems to be the one that he would desire the most.
The second scenario is that Earnhardt signs a one-year deal through the end of 2024 to finish out the current TV deal. That would maintain continuity for this year, but would result in a free-agent mess for 2025.
In that scenario, seemingly everyone would likely try to acquire Earnhardt’s services. FOX Sports could get in there (remember, he did appear on the broadcast of the GEICO 500 Talladega in 2022 as a guest analyst for FOX). NBC would definitely try to retain his services under that scenario, but might end up paying more to do so than if they locked him up now. Warner Bros. Discovery and/or Amazon would likely put out feelers for their new summer packages. Heck, even throw in The CW as well.
That would just make what is already likely to be a pretty wild period of time for media moves even crazier. As it stands, we’re likely going to see the most movement of TV personalities in NASCAR after this season since the series-wide TV deals started in 2001. There’s a good sporting chance that almost none of the current on-air teams in NASCAR look anything like they do right now in 2025.
The parallel here would be RFK Racing co-owner LeBron James (remember, James has a small stake in the team via his small stake in RFK Racing’s parent company, Fenway Sports Group). Instead of signing long-term deals, James would sign two-year deals that allowed him to opt out after one season. You would then have a whole free agency scenario that would result in James signing for more money. While I don’t believe that money is the sole issue here for Earnhardt, if he were a free agent going into 2025, then there could be a bidding war for his services.
The third scenario is that Earnhardt and NBC can’t agree to terms and he’s out for this year. In that scenario, NBC’s booth for NASCAR Cup Series races would likely contract back to a three-man booth with Allen, Burton and Letarte, like it was from 2015-17 before Earnhardt retired from driving. The aforementioned trio have called races together without Earnhardt in recent years on multiple occasions. It likely wouldn’t make for that big of a difference, other than the fact that neither of the three commentators are as excitable as Earnhardt is about the sport in general.
There could also be more booth experimentation in the second half of the year if this were to happen. Brad Daugherty could get some more booth time in Cup races in addition to his infrequent booth work on Xfinity broadcasts. Kyle Petty could get some booth work as well.
Earnhardt would be left to focus on JR Motorsports, Dirty Mo Media and his other businesses. However, he would be free to do other things on TV as well. I would be hard pressed to believe that he would be completely off of television in 2024 if this were to happen. I’d expect him to show up seemingly out of nowhere on NASCAR RaceHub as a guest analyst there, maybe do a couple of NASCAR Xfinity Series or NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series broadcasts on FOX Sports 1. Anything could be in play.
Once the season ends, then the free agency free-for-all mentioned in the second scenario would be in play once again.
The fans would likely be unhappy in this scenario, since Earnhardt clearly has a loyal group of supporters. They might be his fans from when he was still driving, or people that just like him on television. There is a possibility that NBC’s ratings would slip if they couldn’t reach a deal.
As of now, NBC and Earnhardt have time on their side. We’re still more than four months away from the NASCAR on NBC season debut at Iowa Speedway in June. That’s plenty of time to go through multiple contract offers and deliberations between NBC, Earnhardt and his representation.
My guess is that NBC and Earnhardt will work out a long-term deal that will keep him with the network, preferably through the rest of the decade. You just won’t hear about it for a while.
Based on Earnhardt’s own words, I don’t have any reason to believe that they don’t want to work things out. Earnhardt has stated that he’s happy at NBC. That goes a long way in these situations. I’ve also never seen anything from NBC that would indicate that they don’t like Earnhardt. They’ll probably work out a deal in time for all of NBC’s preliminary filming sessions that would need to be done ahead of the Iowa debut.
That said, Earnhardt putting it out there on his platform that “I really don’t have a job, in terms of broadcasting” can put a little pressure on NBC to get a deal done sooner than later. Usually, you only hear about NASCAR TV personalities being out of their contracts because they were out permanently.
Seeing that, as of this writing, NBC Sports has not taken down Earnhardt’s bio from their press website, the network does have some kind of belief that a deal can be reached.
The second scenario would be exactly what it reads like: A stop-gap measure. I doubt either party would want to go that direction, but it might happen if one or both sides get desperate as the deadline looms.
The third is a worse-case scenario, and I’m sure that both sides will take steps to prevent it from happening. It would result in a different feel for NBC’s NASCAR broadcasts in 2024. I’d argue that the majority of viewers would be disappointed if they couldn’t reach a deal.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.