The current NASCAR charter agreement, which ensures that the 36 race teams that opt in have a guaranteed spot on the grid, is expiring at the end of the 2024 season. That means the future of the system is uncertain, as NASCAR and its teams have yet to reach an agreement on how it should be structured going forward – and that’s a problem for the sport’s future, according to a recent report from The New York Times.
Despite an uptick in attendance and viewership over the last few years, NASCAR teams are still struggling to get a return on their investment. Teams claim that NASCAR’s unwillingness to share its revenue is harming the sport’s current business model and discouraging teams from investing more into the sport.
For its part, the sanctioning body has dangled a larger cut of broadcast contract revenue to the teams – but it’s not willing to share any revenue it gains from things like gambling. It has also refused to make the current charter system permanent, something the teams have suggested for quite some time.
Under the current business model, teams argue that they will continue to lose money, discouraging them from investing in things such as the race cars themselves. They aren’t arguing for a cut from current NASCAR income outlets such as ticket sales, but are instead interested in earning a slice of future revenue streams.
“Until we are all aligned and paddling the boat in the same direction, we’ll never be able to reach the full potential that NASCAR has,” said Curtis Polk, who recently purchased a NASCAR team alongside Michael Jordan and is one of the key figures in ongoing negotiations. “There’s just a ton of money on the sidelines that wants to invest in big-time sports, and NASCAR is a big-time sport. It’s not what it was in the early 2000s, but there’s no reason it can’t get back there again.”
However, that’s not to say that NASCAR hasn’t listened to teams at all over the last few years. As for the Next Gen race cars, the sanctioning body did implement several fixes to improve the vehicles’ safety in crashes after drivers raised concerns.
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One of worse desision was to invent the character system…infact lot of teams would never had made Nascar if the expensive charter was inplace back in the 60s….franchising teams…ads nothing to the fans….who could care less if owner is rich or poor…if all these poor mouth coporate teams…who knew the payscale coming in..would leave….there is always some one who can race ..Cheaper…but with Charter..it boxes new teams out…unless they are mulimillaires….if corporate teams are not making money…..leave the sport…i have no simpathy for coporate teams…they ran out a many single car teams in the past….so dtto for them…