Michael Jordan Sues NASCAR.
That was the headlines all over the national sports news scene on Oct. 2 when the 23XI Racing team he co-owned was one of two litigants — the other being Front Row Motorsports — filing an antitrust lawsuit against the stock car sanctioning body.
MJ. His Airness. The man with his logo on millions of shoes across the world and perhaps the greatest basketball player ever to live and that lifted the National Basketball Association to great heights in the late 1990s.
That man was suing NASCAR.
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I think Marty McFly would have made a ton of money if he had that nugget in his Grays Sports Almanac.
The irony in this is that NASCAR has worked feverishly for years to regain its mainstream status after the decline over the last 10 years. Having Jordan in the series was the hopeful catalyst to climb back up out of its asphalt plateau. Instead, after the failed charter negotiations and what Jordan’s team, with co-owners Denny Hamlin and Curtis Polk considered strongarm tactics by NASCAR, they sued.
With the season in the rearview mirrors of every 2024 competitor, the one thing still hanging over these two teams is this federal case. Nobody can be sleeping well in their beds at 23XI or FRM because both teams are — for the moment — heading to Daytona in February as open teams after NASCAR announced that neither would be granted charter status.
The legal battle ensues, as the short-term objective involving a preliminary injunction to allow 23XI and FRM to race under the previous charter agreement hasn’t been ruled on. A new judge was assigned the case on Dec. 11, so that could delay proceedings further. Also still unsettled is the sale of the former Stewart-Haas Racing charters, one each to both litigants, which NASCAR has not approved.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks to the inevitable start of the 2025 season. The holiday season won’t be a relaxing one it seems for the employees at both teams and for NASCAR as they await some sort of news on the direction the lawsuit will take.
What’s at stake? Just millions of dollars in prize money and possible sponsorship, dozens of jobs, and the future willingness of any other team to ever challenge NASCAR’s leadership.
Jordan has attached his name to a lawsuit that is intended to stand up against the NASCAR’s business practices in how they run the sport, specifically the justified allocation of the media revenue. In the modern day, that is the true treasure chest that makes all sports run. Whether it’s in motorsports, stick-and-ball sports or wrestling, all of them rely on the millions from television and streaming services to subsidize and spread the wealth.
Except that isn’t what owners like Hamlin, Jordan or Bob Jenkins at FRM thinks is happening with NASCAR. They are raising issue that the wealth isn’t equal, and that the talent, the teams and drivers, aren’t getting a fair share.
So a line was drawn, and the last part of the season was cast with a Talladega-sized shroud of legal controversy.
But as this offseason continues, NASCAR speeds on with history on their side in the battle of management versus labor.
In 1961, NASCAR driver Curtis Turner tried to organize a union to increase purses for drivers, media rights and retirement benefits. Know what other major sports get items like that? Since the 1990s, all of them. It seems pretty cerebral that this was addressed by Turner when JFK was still in office.
NASCAR banned him from the sport for four years. Since drivers needed to make a wage by running races, only Tim Flock sided with Turner. The result was a broken effort to stand up to the France family.
The same thing happened in 1969 at Talladega when the fledgling stock car drivers’ union boycotted that race at the NASCAR-owned track. Drivers were worried about Goodyear’s tires on the high-banked oval, and they ultimately walked away from competing. Not letting a little union trifle slow them down, NASCAR ran the race with basically scab drivers, those that ran a preliminary event earlier.
Two attempts to stand up to NASCAR. Two heavy-handed responses.
But the world of racing in the 1960s was much different than today.
First of all, teams didn’t need big budget sponsors to get them to the track or pay their dozens of employees. Racing in its infancy was a raw and literal backyard garage endeavor. Some teams had the resources, but others could run some of the schedule and live another day.
The stakes weren’t as high then either. If a team went under, another found its way up the grid as the investment to race wasn’t that overwhelming. Technology was simple and speed was made by fine-tuning, experience and originality.
Teams didn’t need millions of dollars from the series because they survived well enough. That was the world that established NASCAR.
Today, the sports environment is different, more so in racing than any other. In NASCAR the teams participate out of their extreme desire for competition. Only recently has the cash flowed more freely to them. But Jordan and his cohort don’t think it’s enough.
What if it that’s true? How does this impact the sport in the long term? NASCAR could win this lawsuit, and if so, the series quells the last bite of protest within its garage, cementing the way they do business. If the charters aren’t granted back to 23XI and FRM after this is settled, then the survival of those teams seems in question.
By the end of all this, Jordan might take his millions that are stuffed in golden pairs of Air Jordan’s and glide his way out of the sport.
Then there is the possibility that even after the injunction is ruled that the actual lawsuit goes on much longer. What a great story to have popping up on all the sports aggregator sites while the championship is on-going.
It’s not a great sign on the current state of the sport, when your most visible owner in Jordan is taking on the sport he has completely invested in while the dollars are argued over in court. And his car was in the hunt for the championship at Phoenix International Raceway, no less.
Imagine the headlines if his driver Tyler Reddick won that title.
That was more than a month ago, and the battle in court between 23XI, FRM and NASCAR has dragged on well into December. The lawsuit will continue to make all the headlines until a resolution is found.
Tom is an IndyCar writer at Frontstretch, joining in March 2023. Besides writing the IndyCar Previews and frequent editions of Inside IndyCar, he will hop on as a fill-in guest on the Open Wheel podcast The Pit Straight. A native Hoosier, he calls Fort Wayne home. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomBlackburn42.
This is about more than just money. Its about sharing ownership of the series. Owning the charters gives teams much more of a say in the governance of the series. The original charter system was little more than paying off your friends to Nascar. The owners that got them for nothing could turn them into money when they got out. Nascar made it clear that they still owned everything and the teams funding was at their discretion. In fact, Nascar has done poorly at sharing the spoils of new revenue streams and competed directly against the teams for sponsors. This was ok in the days of more sponsors than cars, but the teams are dealing with very slim margins.
In their defense, teams will always spend on R&D. But it now is only affordable to the few teams that actually do engineering work to find advantages on the “kit car’ Nascar mandated. Hendrick, Penske, Gibbs, RCR, RFK and Legacy are the only teams that do R&D. The rest have alliances with one of the above.
The kit car has only increased costs as trying to pick the fly poop from the pepper costs a heck of lot more than machining a new set of spindles every week.
This lawsuit will kill the sport…or rather, fracture it. It will lose at least 2 teams and perhaps more just as High Limits fractured The World of Outlaws. And if its important enough to him, Jordan can fund a rival series.
Marty McFly’s sports almanac was 1950-2000, so it wouldn’t have this nugget in it.