{"id":342974,"date":"2025-12-13T17:08:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T17:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/342974\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T17:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T17:08:16","slug":"after-settlement-nascar-will-be-better-but-it-shouldnt-have-happened-like-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/342974\/","title":{"rendered":"After settlement, NASCAR will be better. But it shouldn\u2019t have happened like this"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 After nine days, nearly 20 witnesses, millions spent on legal fees, and the sport repeatedly bruised and bloodied, NASCAR\u2019s antitrust trial ended Thursday with a historic settlement<\/a> that saw plaintiffs 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports receive significant concessions that will dramatically reshape the sport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The teams \u2014 23XI, Front Row and the 13 other charter-holding organizations \u2014 now hold these licenses essentially permanently, creating a runway for the sport\u2019s business to take off in a way that once seemed unimaginable under the previous model, which had no guarantees that the charter system would be in place beyond a set end date.<\/p>\n

23XI\u2019s ownership group \u2014 consisting of NBA legend Michael Jordan, superstar driver Denny Hamlin and Curtis Polk \u2014 and Front Row owner Bob Jenkins deserve praise for choosing to go toe-to-toe versus NASCAR in federal court. A risky proposition considering few, if any, entities have squared off against NASCAR and emerged victorious in its 77 years of operation. They made the choice, fought the fight and will reap the benefits.<\/p>\n

But in the immediate aftermath of teams being granted permanent charters, the same thing they\u2019ve been asking for since the beginning of this saga, one word comes immediately to mind: unnecessary.<\/p>\n

It was unnecessary for this trial to even start, let alone go eight full days and waste the time of nine jurors.<\/p>\n

It was unnecessary that it took until Dec. 11, 2025, for a settlement to be reached, 14 months after 23XI and Front Row first filed their lawsuit<\/a>. At some point earlier on, common sense should\u2019ve prevailed.<\/p>\n

It was unnecessary for this fight to even happen, as teams should\u2019ve had some version of permanent charters long ago, especially when it became clear how such a system would benefit not only team owners but NASCAR as a whole.<\/p>\n

Looking around at the ruin in the wake of this battle, it\u2019s impossible not to think just how avoidable all this could\u2019ve been. Had NASCAR CEO and chairman Jim France signed off three-plus years ago when team owners began pushing NASCAR hard on the issue of permanent charters, it would\u2019ve prevented the cloud that hovered over the sport for the entirety of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

But France refused.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how you can set anything in this changing world we\u2019re in as permanent,\u201d France said Wednesday during his testimony. \u201cI\u2019m just not comfortable making agreements that go on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ensuing fallout was immense. Some of NASCAR\u2019s innermost secrets were revealed. For the first time in the company\u2019s history, its finances were made public, from profits to expenditures to the salaries of key executives to even who owns what percentage of the company \u2014 something that had forever been closely guarded.<\/p>\n

There was also the disclosure of private communications among NASCAR\u2019s leadership team. These emails and texts painted France as both out of touch and unsympathetic, while also exposing a particularly unpleasant exchange where company executives spoke derogatorily about NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress<\/a>. For a sport whose leadership group is already struggling to connect with its most ardent fans, this exchange was particularly damning.<\/p>\n

Then there is the financial component. Both NASCAR and 23XI\/Front Row hired two of the best antitrust litigators in the world, and they certainly weren\u2019t cheap, well into eight figures per side by some estimates. Surely that money could\u2019ve been put to better use within the sport.<\/p>\n

Maddeningly unnecessary.<\/p>\n

If NASCAR had conceded on the issue of permanent charters 14 months ago, none of this would\u2019ve come to light. Instead, the sport\u2019s leadership and business practices are being called into question to such a degree that it\u2019s hard to fathom how it moves past this without some major changes.<\/p>\n

\"Mike<\/p>\n

\n Longtime NASCAR executive Mike Helton, left, and chairman and CEO Jim France, outside the courtroom last week. (Grant Baldwin \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Compounding the frustration, expressed by so many within the sport, is that part of the discovery in this case showed an executive leadership team trying to find a common ground between France and the teams. Had France listened to them, people he referred to during his testimony as \u201cthe best team we\u2019ve got in my history at NASCAR,\u201d this may have all been averted.<\/p>\n

When negotiations on the next charter agreement began two years ago, NASCAR executives pleaded with France to compromise, knowing that NASCAR conceding permanent charters would\u2019ve likely resulted in every team signing off on the extension. Peace would\u2019ve been maintained. There would\u2019ve been no nastiness, and no antitrust lawsuit that is now likely costing the company hundreds of millions in damages.<\/p>\n

Again, totally unnecessary. And absolutely preventable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time for change,\u201d Hamlin said during his testimony. \u201cAll I knew is we were right and what (NASCAR) did was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The challenge NASCAR faces is finding a way to effectively recover from the blows. Hard questions must be asked and even harder answers given during the postmortem. It\u2019s a tall task to heal the wounds.<\/p>\n

NASCAR, a sport that\u2019s been declining in popularity in the U.S., had its problems before. Now, there\u2019s an even longer road ahead to get this sport back to where it needs to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 After nine days, nearly 20 witnesses, millions spent on legal fees, and the sport repeatedly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,927,82,575],"class_list":["post-342974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-opinion","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342974","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=342974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}