NASCAR considered pursuing joint TV media rights deal with IndyCar

Several documents, depositions, and internal conversations have been made public as a result of the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports, and NASCAR. Along with the full 2025 Charter Agreement, other information offers a behind the scenes look at some 'what if' scenarios over the years, including a proposal for a very different TV package than the one we have now.

Per his own deposition, NASCAR EVP and Chief Media and Revenue Officer Brian Herbst considered a plan where NASCAR and IndyCar would work together on a TV deal, packaging both together in an effort to maximize potential revenue.

Instead, when NASCAR's old TV deal ended after the 2024, it put together a new $7.7 billion deal with multiple networks, spanning from 2025 through 2031. The deal involves previous partners FOX Sports and NBC Sports, but also new ones via Warner Brothers Discovery and even streaming through Amazon's Prime Video.

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IndyCar's new TV deal also began in 2025, giving FOX exclusive rights to broadcast all 17 events on FOX Sports' primary channel. FOX has since bought a 33% stake in Penske Entertainment, which owns the series and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

However, in May of 2019, Herbst says NASCAR "explored a number of different ideas and concepts to try to improve our negotiating position."

A partnership with IndyCar, packaging the media rights deal together for the top open-wheel series and top stock car racing division in the United States was among the ideas considered.

"One of those concepts that never got off the ground was, if we approached IndyCar, to have instead of just NASCAR going to market, having NASCAR and IndyCar going to market together for their media rights," said Herbst in the deposition. "So this was a -- as I recall -- again, this has been six years. But as I recall this was an internal presentation. I think it was just reviewed by the senior leadership team. I'm not sure if it got in front of the board honestly. So at this point, I was reporting to somebody named Jill Gregory, who was the CMO, as well as Craig Neeb, who was an EVP, had a dual reporting structure there. I'm not sure who this one was reported to, but I'll give you the background.

"The background was that NASCAR was going to need to get, like, very creative in order to -- and very aggressive in terms of how we positioned our sport for the next rights discussions because of the viewership decline NASCAR had suffered as a sport from the time we signed our last deal in 2013 to when we started to plan for our media rights future in 2018 and 2019."

While this never came to be, NASCAR has worked through FOX Sports to align more with IndyCar and help bolster both series. Next year, the first Phoenix race weekend will feature both IndyCar and NASCAR Cup action, while the NASCAR Truck Series heads to St. Pete for the first time as part of IndyCar's season-opener.

He went on to say that there was a "decline in the pay TV environment," noting a separation between the 'must-have' sports and 'nice-to-have' sports for broadcasters. Officials were concerned that NASCAR would be relegated to the 'nice-to-have' list.

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