A number of paperwork, depositions, and inside conversations have been made public because of the continued antitrust lawsuit between 23XI Racing, Entrance Row Motorsports, and NASCAR. Together with the total 2025 Constitution Settlement, different data gives a behind the scenes take a look at some ‘what if’ situations over time, together with a proposal for a really totally different TV bundle than the one we have now now.
Per his personal deposition, NASCAR EVP and Chief Media and Income Officer Brian Herbst thought of a plan the place NASCAR and IndyCar would work collectively on a TV deal, packaging each collectively in an effort to maximise potential income.
As an alternative, when NASCAR’s outdated TV deal ended after the 2024, it put collectively a brand new $7.7 billion take care of a number of networks, spanning from 2025 by means of 2031. The deal includes earlier companions FOX Sports activities and NBC Sports activities, but in addition new ones by way of Warner Brothers Discovery and even streaming by means of Amazon’s Prime Video.
IndyCar’s new TV deal additionally started in 2025, giving FOX unique rights to broadcast all 17 occasions on FOX Sports activities’ main channel. FOX has since purchased a 33% stake in Penske Leisure, which owns the collection and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Nevertheless, in Might of 2019, Herbst says NASCAR “explored a lot of totally different concepts and ideas to attempt to enhance our negotiating place.”
A partnership with IndyCar, packaging the media rights deal collectively for the highest open-wheel collection and high inventory automobile racing division in the US was among the many concepts thought of.
“A kind of ideas that by no means obtained off the bottom was, if we approached IndyCar, to have as a substitute of simply NASCAR going to market, having NASCAR and IndyCar going to market collectively for his or her media rights,” mentioned Herbst within the deposition. “So this was a — as I recall — once more, this has been six years. However as I recall this was an inside presentation. I believe it was simply reviewed by the senior management staff. I am unsure if it obtained in entrance of the board truthfully. So at this level, I used to be reporting to someone named Jill Gregory, who was the CMO, in addition to Craig Neeb, who was an EVP, had a twin reporting construction there. I am unsure who this one was reported to, however I am going to provide the background.
“The background was that NASCAR was going to want to get, like, very artistic as a way to — and really aggressive when it comes to how we positioned our sport for the subsequent rights discussions due to the viewership decline NASCAR had suffered as a sport from the time we signed our final deal in 2013 to once we began to plan for our media rights future in 2018 and 2019.”
Whereas this by no means got here to be, NASCAR has labored by means of FOX Sports activities to align extra with IndyCar and assist bolster each collection. Subsequent 12 months, the primary Phoenix race weekend will function each IndyCar and NASCAR Cup motion, whereas the NASCAR Truck Sequence heads to St. Pete for the primary time as a part of IndyCar’s season-opener.
He went on to say that there was a “decline within the pay TV setting,” noting a separation between the ‘must-have’ sports activities and ‘nice-to-have’ sports activities for broadcasters. Officers had been involved that NASCAR could be relegated to the ‘nice-to-have’ record.
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