CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The landmark settlement that ended the antitrust lawsuit filed by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports against NASCAR saw the league make several notable concessions beyond just granting teams “evergreen” charters, comparable to a franchise in most professional sports leagues, multiple team sources familiar with the settlement terms have told The Athletic.
In addition to all 15 charter-holding teams having their charters become permanent instead of expiring at a set end date, the settlement terms include teams receiving a say in governance and a greater percentage of various NASCAR revenue streams.
The combined gains are considered a massive win by 23XI and Front Row that will benefit every Cup Series organization, as the teams achieved many of the goals they laid out when the most recent charter negotiations began more than two years ago.
The exact terms of the revised charter agreement are still being sorted out, but the pending revisions were outlined with the charter-holding teams in a meeting Thursday afternoon, sources said.
These changes follow NASCAR and 23XI/Front Row submitting their settlement terms Thursday morning to Kenneth D. Bell, the presiding judge in the lawsuit filed last October by the two teams. Bell agreed, ending the contentious lawsuit that has roiled the sport for the past 14 months.
Under the previous charter agreement, which expired at the end of the 2024 NASCAR season, teams could issue a “strike” whenever NASCAR instituted a rules change they didn’t like. Over the span of the agreement, first enacted in 2016, any team that issued three strikes then had the ability to race in a competing series without punishment.
At the behest of NASCAR, and to the dismay of the teams, the “three-strike rule” was removed from the 2025 charter agreement. That rule will now be reinserted, those sources say, though expanded to five strikes.
Teams also will receive an unknown percentage of NASCAR’s international media rights deals, of which they previously received zero, and a one-third portion of new business deals involving teams’ intellectual property.
In addition to the gains 23XI and Front Row achieved for every team, both organizations will have their combined six charters returned to them. They lost the charters, valued at as much as $300 million total based on recent sales (the last charter sale was for $45 million), during the ongoing litigation. Ownership of one of the 36 available charters provides certain financial guarantees and entry into every race in the sport’s premier Cup Series.
NASCAR also agreed to pay monetary damages to 23XI and Front Row, according to sources, though the exact figure is unknown.