Did You Notice?: NASCAR, Team Owners Playing With Fire?

Did You Notice? … The chaos of Austin Dillon’s controversial finish at Richmond Raceway has obscured the bigger story within NASCAR circles coming out of Olympic Break?

Despite two more weeks to sit, think and potentially renegotiate, both NASCAR and its team ownership group, the Race Team Alliance (RTA), are nowhere near finalizing a new charter agreement that expires at the end of the season.

When I say nowhere near, let me make this clear: the team owners are somewhere in Canada and NASCAR is somewhere around Mexico, maybe further south. Not a single person I’ve discussed this deal with on either side of the fence thinks negotiations are going well. Frontstretch reporters at Richmond Raceway this weekend discovered nothing that changes the narrative.

Instead, internal anxiety builds at a pivotal point in NASCAR’s future. A blockbuster TV deal begins in 2025, adding three new long-term partners: Warner Brothers Discovery, Amazon and the CW (covering the sport’s NASCAR Xfinity Series full time).

For the NASCAR Cup Series, this agreement opens the door to streaming and has plenty of upside. Amazon, just like with its NFL Thursday Night Football deal, could connect the sport to younger fans who lose track of NASCAR the second it moves to USA Network or FOX Sports 1 during the late spring and summer months.

Those new broadcasters are poised to bring fresh approaches to covering the sport, investing in an expensive property that combined will cost all networks (including FOX and NBC) a reported $1.1 billion per season. That money is a showcase of NASCAR’s power and influence: the NHL, by comparison, makes $625 million per year from its deals with Turner and ESPN.

Make no mistake: while down from its peak in the mid 2000s, NASCAR remains extremely popular. Richmond’s race on Sunday (Aug. 11) attracted 2.22 million viewers on USA, the highest non-Olympic event of the week on television. Ticket sales at tracks are up, and Cup has seen great competition this year with a number of record-setting finishes.

NASCAR is also positioning itself for how its racing will evolve over the next decade. For years, it’s been actively courting new manufacturers, with everyone from Nissan to Honda to Dodge rumored to come on board at some point during the 2020s. Its electric prototype, introduced last month, is part of a long-term effort to move toward where the majority of American vehicles are headed. Behind the scenes, Ben Kennedy, the grandson of Bill France Jr., has proven himself to be a rising star, a strong leader poised to take the reins someday.

Everything should be pointing in the right direction, creating delight behind the scenes instead of doubt. But you can’t accomplish any long-term goals if there aren’t any cars on the track come February. And with the charter agreement in limbo, NASCAR finds itself in an increasingly untenable position of daring its entire fleet of car owners to pull out.

I’m not going to delve into the nitty gritty of how we got here. If you talk to NASCAR or the RTA, both sides feel strongly about their position and the deal they’re trying to reach. Instead, we’re reaching a moment to stop and remind everyone of the stakes involved.

I was 13 years old in 1994, when IndyCar was at the peak of its existence in America. Back then, the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) routinely pulled monster ratings for its Indianapolis 500, peaking with an 11.1 in 1987. That race routinely outshined even NASCAR’s Daytona 500. It was part of a CART schedule that drew larger viewership and national interest.

It was a big deal for NASCAR to debut at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that year: it was the equivalent of a “minor league” series getting a chance to play on the same stage where the real racing happened.

But in 1994, former IMS CEO Tony George grew dissatisfied with CART. Frustrated with what he felt was a select group of car owners who controlled the series, George formed his own organization, the Indy Racing League, utilizing the Indy 500 as leverage. He couldn’t be talked off the ledge, and in 1996, the IRL debuted at Walt Disney World Speedway, jamming a stake into the heart of open-wheel.

CART drivers and owners were placed in an impossible position, shut out of the Indy 500 in George’s new league. Suddenly, there were two rival open-wheel races to choose from Memorial Day Weekend: CART chose to run a 27-car, Michigan 500 the same day as Indy.

It was the start of what would be a bloody, 13-year war that decimated American interest in open-wheel. By the time CART went out of business, merging with the IRL in 2008, the Indy 500 had dipped to a rating (4.6) less than half of what it was in 1995. And outside of that race? Audiences were struggling to top one million. Venues were virtually giving away tickets to get people in the stands at some tracks.

Over 15 years later, the IndyCar Series remains without the momentum it lost over that feud back in the 1990s. The illness feels terminal; how could the sport ever rebuild in today’s fractured world of a gazillion entertainment options? Ironically, IndyCar now needs NASCAR to drum up the buzz for its own sport, like Kyle Larson’s choice to jump over and run the Indy 500 back in May.

In assessing the open-wheel wreckage, it’s clear why people tried to move mountains and stop George in 1994: everyone lost. Two sides choosing not to compromise led to the demise of open-wheel racing as a major sport in this country.

Around the same time the IRL happened, Major League Baseball had a devastating strike in 1994. Both sides couldn’t come to a labor agreement, and their dispute resulted in an unprecedented cancellation of the World Series. It was the first time in 90 years baseball failed to crown a champion.

Why? Both the players and owners, two sides making millions of dollars, failed to come together and reach common ground. Their inability to come to a compromise soured fans on a sport that had been America’s favorite for over a century.

Before the strike, in 1991 (the last time two American teams made the World Series), baseball could get 50 million people to watch the Fall Classic. Since baseball’s return, in 1995, ratings have crossed the 40 million mark for only one game, when the Cubs won it all in 2016.

Instead, baseball’s business standoff gave an opening the NFL and NBA bulldozed through. Guys in suits at the negotiating table forgot where their money comes from: if the fans don’t show up to watch them play, all the air goes out of the balloon.

It’s where both sides of this NASCAR negotiation need to step back and think through what the endgoal is here. Neither side will be happy with the deal they strike; that’s what compromise is all about. But how will any potential standoff affecting 2025 leave you better off than you are right now?

How would any type of split by the RTA, whether it’s a new league, moonlighting at short tracks, etc., lead to actual growth within the sport? And if teams like Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske have marquee drivers sit races out next year, trying to prove a point, how is NASCAR going to sell tickets to a watered-down product?

Throughout the whole process, you’ve got a bunch of rich people complaining about the cost of doing business. It’s how the fans will see it, regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong in the process. There is no possible world in which this ends well for either side, except in their own heads. The cost of being right is to rip the whole thing apart with no long-term plan.

Not everyone will agree on the facts in negotiations, but boy, are they missing this one: the costs of failing to reach a long-term compromise will devastate NASCAR with no real way to ever climb back up the hill. And I think people, in their push to be the “winner” in this deal, are starting to pretend that’s not going to be true.

To me, that’s alarming, a far more devastating outcome than figuring out a way to compromise. Let’s hope both sides find a way to get this done.

Did You Notice?… Quick hits before taking off …

• Did you really expect Dillon and owner Richard Childress to be apologetic about the Richmond finish? It’s the same team that employed Dale Earnhardt Sr., known as The Intimidator for rough driving. Earnhardt right hooked Darrell Waltrip for a win back in 1986 in a move widely panned at the time … but which also proved the catalyst for Earnhardt’s and Childress’ first championship together.
• There is no option: Goodyear needs to bring multiple tire compounds to as many races as possible going forward. It’s the best idea and execution we’ve seen from it in years.

Follow Tom Bowles on X @NASCARBowles

About the author

Tom Bowles

Website

The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 40+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.

You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.

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