NASCAR’s Steve Phelps discusses future media rights package, schedule,
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NASCAR President Steve Phelps said during a webinar Monday that the sport will have at least one additional company broadcast Cup races in 2025, stressed his reluctance to increasing horsepower and said changes will continue to be made to the schedule.
Phelps covered several topics in a 45-minute session during the fourth annual Race Industry Week series of webinars sponsored by Speed Sport, Racer.com and EPartrade.com.
Phelps hinted Monday that an agreement on the next Cup media rights deal could be announced soon. Phelps said that both NBC and Fox are expected to remain as broadcasters of Cup races in the new media rights package, which will begin with the 2025 season.
But Phelps said that NBC and Fox won’t be alone in broadcasting Cup races in 2025 and beyond.
“We are going to have an additional partner and we may have two additional partners,” Phelps said. “That’s kind of where we’re trying to figure out in these last few weeks — what that’s going to look like, but we already know we’re going to have more partners.”
Phelps noted the value of having events on broadcast TV, cable TV and streaming.
“I think what I would call hedging our bet is a smart thing for us to do as a sport,” Phelps said. “No one has any idea what’s going to happen with streaming and what’s going to happen with cable. We do know that broadcast television is going to be around for the foreseeable future at 125 million homes. That’s not going to change.
“What we do know is that the cable universe has declined. So what does that look like in two years, five years, seven years? Don’t know, but we better make sure that we have distribution points that will allow us to be successful moving forward, to have as many eyeballs as we can, while not insignificant, also getting paid. The revenue is significant that comes from these media rights or from these media partners.”
The current 10-year media rights deal for Cup races with NBC and Fox is worth a reported $8.2 billion ($820 million per season).
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An increase in media rights fees will be important for teams, who seek to have the charter agreement with NASCAR extend beyond the 2024 season.
Each of the 36 charters guarantee those Cup teams a spot in every points race and additional payments over non-charter teams. That money is critical for teams.
“Race teams want three things, or so they have told us,” Phelps said. “They want…
Read More: NASCAR’s Steve Phelps discusses future media rights package, schedule, 2023-11-28 01:12:19