{"id":148017,"date":"2025-09-16T12:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/148017\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T12:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:06:07","slug":"23xi-front-row-deny-nascars-allegations-of-illegal-collusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/148017\/","title":{"rendered":"23XI, Front Row Deny NASCAR’s Allegations of Illegal Collusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFront Row Motorsports, 23XI Racing and Curtis Polk\u2014who co-owns 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan<\/a> and Denny Hamlin<\/a>\u2014argue that NASCAR<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0counter lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0against them for orchestrating an \u201cillegal cartel\u201d should be taken off track.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast Friday, the teams\u2019 lead attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, filed a motion for summary judgment with U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell. The focus of the nearly year-long legal battle has been 23XI and Front Row accusing NASCAR and CEO Jim France of suppressing the competition, and NASCAR countersued in March.<\/p>\n

\n\tNASCAR depicts 23XI and Front Row as abusing antitrust<\/a> litigation to rewrite contractual terms to their advantage. 23XI and Front Row disliked what NASCAR offered through charters, which guarantee starting positions in NASCAR-sanctioned races. Charters come with conditions, such as restrictions on competing in other circuits and a mutual release of claims, that NASCAR maintains have increased the value of charters and provided a stable and competitive market. While other teams have accepted this tradeoff, 23XI and Front Row haven\u2019t; they seek preferred terms that they maintain are justified given NASCAR\u2019s degree of control over the marketplace for premier stock car racing teams.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs NASCAR tells it, 23XI and Front Row went beyond merely rejecting the terms of a contract offer. The teams\u2014which, as competing businesses, can run afoul of antitrust law if they collude in ways that harm competition\u2014also allegedly threatened group boycotts of NASCAR events.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPolk, a longtime business partner of Jordan who was vice chairman of Hornets Sports & Entertainment when Jordan was the NBA team\u2019s majority owner, is depicted as masterminding efforts to undermine NASCAR. Among NASCAR\u2019s accusations is that Polk met with at least one NASCAR media partner during negotiations for a new NASCAR media rights agreement, a meeting that NASCAR portrays as disruptive given Polk\u2019s \u201cthreats.\u201d Polk also allegedly applied \u201ccoercion\u201d against other teams\u2019 owners to \u201cnot break ranks\u201d by accepting NASCAR\u2019s terms. Further, Polk is described as \u201corchestrating a scheme to extract even more money from NASCAR and the industry for the benefit of himself, his team 23XI and Front Row, among others.\u201d These alleged activities led NASCAR to weigh contingency plans in the event of a work stoppage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNot so fast, Kessler insists in the summary judgment brief. He writes that NASCAR\u2019s counterclaims reflect \u201clitigation gamesmanship designed to retaliate\u201d against 23XI, Front Row and Polk and a ruse to distract from NASCAR\u2019s \u201cmonopolistic practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKessler also maintains that evidence uncovered in pretrial discovery fails to show his clients \u201cparticipated in any conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of trade.\u201d As Kessler tells it, the teams \u201cnever\u201d agreed to prevent NASCAR from individually negotiating with teams. He points out that 13 of the 15 chartered ultimately signed the 2025 charter agreement \u201con terms\u201d that NASCAR allegedly \u201cdemanded,\u201d a fact that Kessler says undermines the possibility a boycott was afoot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tKessler also disputes that Polk engaged in wrongdoing. He notes that Polk only became involved in NASCAR in 2020, four years after the charter system was created and a year after teams \u201cbegan to have new joint negotiations with NASCAR over the charter system.\u201d Kessler challenges NASCAR\u2019s description of Polk as an orchestrator of disruption when (as 23XI and Front Row see it) the timeline indicates his involvement would have come too late for him to acquire such an authoritative role. Kessler also argues that \u201cother teams often did not agree with Mr. Polk\u2019s views,\u201d a depiction intended to downplay Polk\u2019s influence.<\/p>\n

\n\tNASCAR will have the chance to try to rebut Kessler\u2019s arguments. Meanwhile, unless they reach a settlement, the parties are just 77 days away from a trial in North Carolina.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Front Row Motorsports, 23XI Racing and Curtis Polk\u2014who co-owns 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin\u2014argue that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[4997,49,48,3932,4998,3004,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-148017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-antitrust","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-denny-hamlin","12":"tag-federal-courts","13":"tag-michael-jordan","14":"tag-nascar","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}