the antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR and France<\/a>.<\/p>\nTwo race teams, including one owned by Michael Jordan, are suing NASCAR for alleged monopolistic practice. The plaintiffs\u2019 case, which rested Wednesday morning, revolved around showing NASCAR forced anticompetitive terms on the teams in an attempt to maintain its monopoly.<\/p>\n
One of the primary factors was the denial of permanent charters, which are similar to professional sports franchises and come with certain revenue guarantees to teams \u2014 except NASCAR\u2019s charters have expiration dates and must be renegotiated.<\/p>\n
The teams begged France for permanent charters with an ability to only renegotiate the economic terms, but France refused again and again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how you can set anything in this changing world we\u2019re in as permanent,\u201d France said. \u201cI\u2019m just not comfortable making agreements that go on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 81-year-old France disagreed that NASCAR did not cede on any of the teams\u2019 negotiating points, but acknowledged permanent charters were not an area in which he would change his opinion. It wasn\u2019t only the ability to negotiate economic terms, he said; it was the unknown.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t know \u2019til we get there,\u201d France said.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey Kessler, the teams\u2019 attorney, noted how France was proud that his family built the sport and planned to pass it down for generations. In that context, he asked France how it would feel \u201cif a monopolist came in and said, \u2018I can take this away from you at any time\u2019 \u2026 with an expiration date and (terms that say) \u2018either agree with what I want or lose it.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand what you\u2019re trying to say here,\u201d France replied.<\/p>\n
France told jurors his management style is a \u201cconsensus builder\u201d and said he believes his executive team is \u201cthe best team we\u2019ve got in my history at NASCAR.\u201d But he disagreed with his executives when they urged for more of a compromise with the teams.<\/p>\n
France said that after becoming NASCAR\u2019s CEO in 2019, he visited race shops and was taken aback to see the number of cars on the shop floors. In his view, race teams had become manufacturers and were in an \u201carms race\u201d to make costly parts that he vowed to rein in.<\/p>\n
He instituted a limited approval process for changes and then ultimately introduced the spec \u201cNext Gen\u201d car, which requires all teams to use the same parts from the same supplier.<\/p>\n
The degree to which France was involved in the charter negotiations, and how he shaped them as the head of NASCAR, has been a focus of the plaintiffs\u2019 case, alleging that France utilized anticompetitive measures to maintain control over the sport that his father was instrumental in founding in 1948 and has since remained in the family\u2019s control.<\/p>\n
Evidence presented Tuesday showed that NASCAR\u2019s ownership is split between two France family trusts \u2014 one controlled by Jim France, who owns 54 percent of the company, and the other by his niece Lesa France Kennedy, who owns 46 percent. Jim and Lesa are on the seven-person NASCAR board. The other members are NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps, NASCAR president Steve O\u2019Donnell, longtime NASCAR employee Mike Helton, former NASCAR attorney Gary Crotty and Ben Kennedy, Lesa\u2019s son.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs have argued that the insular nature of NASCAR\u2019s board has allowed them to maintain monopolistic control of premier stock car racing.<\/p>\n
The defense begins presenting its case<\/p>\n
After France, the defense started presenting its portion of the case by calling John Probst, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer.<\/p>\n
Probst defended NASCAR\u2019s Next Gen car and heralded its cost-saving measures for teams after NASCAR spent $14 million developing the vehicle.<\/p>\n
He argued with Kessler\u2019s assertion NASCAR was doing something unconventional by protecting the car\u2019s intellectual property with restrictions, since it owns several patents on the vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoke would not create a new recipe and immediately give it to Pepsi,\u201d Probst said.<\/p>\n
But Kessler said NASCAR could have created the Next Gen car \u201cexactly as you did it without restrictions\u201d on teams being able to use it in other series.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll they have to do is ask,\u201d Probst said. \u201cNo one has asked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kessler countered by saying NASCAR and France would have never allowed that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 NASCAR chairman and CEO Jim France testified he could not offer race teams permanent charters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82,575],"class_list":["post-337832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337832","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=337832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}