NASCAR is on the cusp of announcing $7.7B worth of media rights deals with Fox Sports, NBC, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon. The average annual value of the deals, including the previously announced CW deal, is $1.1B per year, which represents about a 40% increase over NASCAR’s current deals.
NASCAR plans to make a formal announcement in Nashville later this afternoon as part of its end-of-season banquet. The deals start in 2025 and run through the 2031 season.
The 40% increase represents a big win for the racing circuit, especially given the tightening of the marketplace around sports media rights caused by cord-cutting and cord shaving.
NASCAR execs said the drawn-out negotiations, which started earlier this year, took longer than expected. But NASCAR President Steve Phelps said the deals will position the racing circuit well amid the upheaval in the media business.
“If you think about the opportunity to really have broadcast, cable and streaming, we think it’s an important thing for the next seven years,” Phelps said. “It signifies to the sports world, to the sponsors, to everyone, that NASCAR is clearly a Tier 1 property and a must-have property, and that’s what I think will be the over-arching message that will be signaled here.”
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Here's how the deals look. NASCAR has three national series: The premier Cup Series, the Xfinity Series and the Craftsman Truck Series.
As part of the new deals, Fox will get 14 Cup Series races annually in the first portion of the season and including the Daytona 500. After Fox carries its 14 events, Amazon’s Prime Video will stream five events, marking the first time that NASCAR’s premier events will be exclusively streamed.
Warner Bros. Discovery will take over after Amazon’s races and carry the next five, which will be simulcast on both TNT and the B/R Sports tier on the Max streaming service. NBC Sports will complete the season with the final 14 races.
“When we did this the last time in 2013, the media landscape was more stable and consistent,” said NASCAR SVP/Media & Productions Brian Herbst. “What was important for us now ... is that we wanted some broadcast windows, and then also to be represented on the digital and streaming side. ... It was important for us to be in front of a new fanbase that may skew a little bit younger.”
For comparison to the new deal, Fox this year aired 18 races, while NBC aired 20, inclusive of two exhibition events and 36 points events.
Of the 14 races to be aired by Fox Sports, five will be on the Fox broadcast channel while the rest will be on FS1. Of the 14 to be aired by NBC Sports, four will be on the NBC broadcast channel while the rest will be on USA Network.
A unique part of these deals is that NASCAR carved out a package of practice and qualifying sessions for the Cup Series. Amazon Prime will carry these events from the start of the season through the end of its races (with the exception of the Busch Light Clash exhibition, Daytona 500 and NASCAR All-Star Race exhibition, which will remain with Fox).
WBD’s Max will carry these events for the remainder of the season after that; practice and qualifying will stream on Max and air on linear TV on truTV.
In the Xfinity Series, the CW will air all those races, while in the Truck Series, Fox will continue to air those races as it has done during the current agreement, which is from 2015 through 2024.
Deal terms also provide highlight rights to WBD’s Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. Combined with the move to Amazon Prime Video, NASCAR execs expect these deals to bring in younger and more diverse viewers.
“We're going to invest and put the resources of the company behind it to help grow the sport,” said Jay Marine, Amazon’s global head of sports. “If you look at what we've done with ‘Thursday Night Football’ in terms of delivering an audience that's seven years younger, the unique reach we provide is going to be really helpful.”
In an attempt to alleviate the problems of convincing fans to navigate at least five different channels and sites to watch races, NASCAR convinced the media companies to cross promote races that appear on other channels.
“We are not in the business of trying to do every sport and every league out there,” said WBD Sports Chair & CEO Luis Silberwasser. “We really try to be strategic about the sports that we get behind and the leagues that we get behind. Our strategy is Tier 1 sports, and NASCAR is a Tier 1 sport.”
