NASCAR is celebrating all of its champions this week in Nashville, and while many anticipated the sport’s organizing body would have news about its new media rights deal, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
NASCAR president Steve Phelps in a Monday webinar alluded to the fact that details could be available before the end of the year. What is known is that FOX and NBC will continue to be the main two carriers of the Cup Series from 2025 onward.
What’s also known is that NASCAR has been shopping around a smaller package of races to tech giant Amazon and to Warner Bros. Discovery for the purpose of airing on TNT. Whether one or both of those companies signs on the dotted line remains to be seen, but Phelps hinted that it’s possible both could split a 10-race slate.
“We are going to have an additional partner and we may have two additional partners,” Phelps told NBC Sports. “That’s kind of where we’re trying to figure out in these last few weeks — what that’s going to look like, but we already know we’re going to have more partners.”
Adding a streaming partner would be new territory for NASCAR, but Phelps recognizes that it’s a resource available to try and tap into. Still, linear TV remains the main focus in terms of guaranteeing maximum visibility for events.
“No one has any idea what’s going to happen with streaming and what’s going to happen with cable. We do know that broadcast television is going to be around for the foreseeable future at 125 million homes. That’s not going to change,” Phelps said.
“What we do know is that the cable universe has declined,” he added. “So what does that look like in two years, five years, seven years? Don’t know, but we better make sure that we have distribution points that will allow us to be successful moving forward, to have as many eyeballs as we can, while not insignificant, also getting paid. The revenue is significant that comes from these media rights or from these media partners.”
The current TV rights deal with FOX and NBC is set to expire at the end of the 2024 season and worth an estimated $820 million a year. With the rising costs for teams to participate and be competitive in the sport, Phelps said the most logical way to help bring about some financial relief to teams is by generating more TV money.
NASCAR will already enter 2025 with at least one new TV partner, as earlier in the fall it was announced that The CW would become the exclusive TV home for the Xfinity Series. The Craftsman Truck Series airs exclusively on FS1.
