NASCAR 25 Creator-gate: a clever play or more alienation?
Let’s say for the sake of argument that you aren’t tuned into the gaming community. In that case, you’d be forgiven if you missed the event that took place earlier this week in which NASCAR paid a large sum of money to popular contemporary gaming creators to play the new NASCAR 25 video game.
The game, released earlier this month, received mixed reviews when it dropped. However, that hasn’t stopped NASCAR-specific content creators like Dale Tanhardt from playing.
To give you the skinny, NASCAR paid six figures to advertise, and it contracted with a few extremely successful content creators to play the new game. These creators, by and large, were not sim racers, NASCAR-centered content creators or, by any account, race fans in the slightest. However, Carson Hocevar was supposed to participate in the event, even if he didn’t stay for the full duration, so there was some tie-back.
Now, that might sound crazy on the outset, but in reality, it was a very calculated move. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of people watch these creators’ streams every day. It was a massive get for NASCAR to kick this off. It just needed to go well.
Shockingly enough, it did not.
The game was buggy, players were in separate lobbies for a bit and the game servers went down not once but twice. The event was a total flop and painted NASCAR in about as bad a light as possible if being hip is the long-term goal. Even the official NASCAR stream reportedly shut down after the first 15 minutes or so.
Was this a smart move by NASCAR or a total flop? A bit of both. Inviting popular streamers with nontraditional NASCAR audiences to play the game was an excellent idea in theory. However, theory only gets one so far. The game needed to work, and work well. Which didn’t happen.
I’ve been worried about this game from the outset. It’s currently sitting at a 3.8/5 review score among Google users but earned a 7/10 from IGN. The reviews have been incredibly … neutral. It’s a game about NASCAR that, most of the time, works. Under most circumstances, that would be ideal. After all, Madden NFL keeps selling year after year.
But for a sport that is hemorrhaging viewership in a space where it might quite literally be the only competitor, NASCAR and iRacing needed to smash this game clear out of the park. It needed to be on par with the best of the NASCAR Thunder series, given the amount of hype that was built around it and the time that went into it.
The reality is that’s not the case. In fact, this is just an OK game for a sport that is losing viewers left and right. Armed with that knowledge, at this critical juncture just before championship weekend, the powers that be within the sport went ahead and dumped a big blot of ink in the middle of what could have been a great opportunity.
Nobody squanders great chances like this sport does, folks. One day, this will make for a thrilling documentary. Perhaps Tanhardt summed it up best.
How much do the new NAScourt financial documents matter?
To keep it short and save time for explanation, a hell of a lot.
This week, more documents from the court proceedings were unsealed and released to the public before the judge in the case dismissed NASCAR’s claim of what was essentially a gang of team owners getting together to form an “illegal cartel” to leverage negotiations.
The judgment in the team’s favor was significant and could be taken as evidence of the direction the judge is leaning toward. However, that’s not what everyone is talking about, and for good reason. Instead, everyone is focusing on this specific round of documents that were revealed to the public.
Because for the first time in this case, we’re getting financial numbers.
To motorsport business nerds like me, it doesn’t get any better than this, and in NASCAR’s case, it might not get any worse.
If you thought the price of eggs rose a lot in the last few years, wait until you hear how much a charter costs now in comparison to just a few seasons ago. We found in this set of documents that teams like 23XI Racing, which purchased its first charters for anywhere from $2 million to $4.7 million, just spent well over $20 million on its latest charters, acquired from Stewart-Haas Racing.
We already knew that Legacy Motor Club planned to purchase the Rick Ware Racing charter for well over $40 million, and there are few signs of those prices coming down as we currently sit. Under most circumstances, that rise in value would be on par with many other professional sports.
However, these times are different, in large part, due to the numbers you’re about to read.
NASCAR made just over $100 million last year, compared with over $500 million the year prior. Now, to get this out of the way, that $500 million includes the profits from selling off a portion of the land where Auto Club Speedway sat, which would explain the mass influx of cash in 2023. I would assume that if this drags out much further, more documents of this nature will be released.
In terms of what the teams and the drivers make, the difference between now and just 10 years ago is astronomical. Only three teams actually made money in 2024. Let that sink in and consider the fact that those three are just one fifth of the entire NASCAR Cup Series field.
Driver salaries are down, and NASCAR is only paying teams a base of around $140,000 a year before purse and points earnings. Therefore, if you’re not competitive, good luck becoming so without crippling yourself financially.
If this gets dragged out into the public eye, the entity that suffers the absolute most will be the larger one, and this is just the first step in that process. If I were NASCAR, I’d be rushing to settle after these documents were made public. But if the organization is too prideful to do that, it might only get uglier from here on out.
Does anyone not named Connor Zilisch or Corey Heim deserve a NASCAR Xfinity Series or NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title?
Given the playoff format, both Connor Zilisch and Corey Heim have a chance to win their respective series championships this weekend at Phoenix Raceway. In that same breath, given the playoff format, they also have a theoretically equal chance to lose those championships.
The debate for most of this season has landed on the conclusion that this type of possibility is not something the majority of the NASCAR fan base wants to see, and thus, NASCAR executives have promised that change is coming to the championship format.
Whether that’s a whole-season points race or a modification of it has yet to be determined, but what I want to know is this: With the two of them being the absolute pinnacle of dominance this year in each series, would the fan base even acknowledge anyone else as the champion?
Heim and Zilisch have captivated audiences this year by winning on just about every track configuration, setting several records in the process. If you were to ask an average NASCAR fan on the street who their championship pick was, who do you think they would choose? If you think it’s anyone outside of these two, you’re just lying to yourself.
In that case, if anyone else wins the championship, it will only be a sour note left in the fans’ mouths as a reminder of the playoff format that came and went. In other words, it will be the final bow on the worst gift that the sport has given its fans in recent memory.
NASCAR as a whole better hope that both of these drivers cross the finish line with the win, or it might turn away even more heads in what it hopes to be a comeback year in 2026.
Does Layne Riggs’ extension make him a championship favorite in 2026?
Speaking of next year, one of the challengers for the Truck trophy this weekend signed a new extension that will ensure he remains with his current team through the 2026 season and beyond.
With it looking more and more like Heim will spend time jumping around from series to series next season, Layne Riggs might be the smartest early pick for a championship in recent years.
Despite Heim’s dominance, Riggs has put together quite the campaign, earning three wins and a host of top-five finishes. Currently, Riggs sits on the outside of the Championship 4 picture looking in, but he remains the driver with the second-most wins this year.
Riggs is poised to make his ultimate run. He’s significantly improved each year he’s been in the Truck Series, and if he can do so again in 2026, he should be as close to a sure thing as we can get to crowning a way-too-early champion next season.
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for multiple automotive news outlets, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host, and a PhD. student at a premier college of media and mass communication. Tanner began working with Frontstretch in 2022, covering the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series.