Much of the sports media rights discussion over the past year has concerned the NBA, which later this year begins a new rights deal that brings in two new partners — NBC and Amazon — while jettisoning its home of 40 years, TNT (Warner Bros. Discovery). Yet the NBA is not the only major property beginning a long-term partnership.
The start of the new NASCAR season marks the beginning of a new seven-year, $7.7 billion media rights deal that brings in new partners Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon and Nexstar (CW). The three new partners join incumbents Fox Sports and NBC Sports.
WBD and Amazon will split a ten-race run of summer Cup Series races from the Coca-Cola 600 on Prime Video in May through the Brickyard 400 on TNT in July, plus season-long practice and qualifying windows. (The newcomers will share production, including on-air personnel, somewhat notable given WBD sued to block Amazon’s acquisition of the NBA.) Nexstar’s CW is now the exclusive home of the second-tier Xfinity Series, which it began broadcasting ahead of schedule late last year.
Not even including Xfinity Series races on CW, NASCAR will air across FOX, FS1, Prime Video, TNT/Max, NBC/Peacock and USA Network this season, a lineup that brings to mind the era before the sport consolidated its media rights, when races seemed to air anywhere and everywhere. Yet there is considerably more rhyme and reason to NASCAR’s present-day media strategy.
Determining how to split a 38-race schedule across four different partners, six different networks and three different distribution methods requires a balance of priorities indicative of the broader state of television.
For the leagues, the cord is harder to cut
NASCAR begins its new rights deal at a time when other motorsports properties are simplifying their approach to media rights. IndyCar has gone exclusively to broadcast television with a deal that will put every race on “big FOX” this season. Formula 1 could go exclusively to streaming if Netflix wins the race to replace exiting incumbent ESPN. For NASCAR, the new television era consists of broadcast, cable and streaming.
It may be surprising to learn that of those three, it is cable that will have the most Cup Series races per season in the new deal. The Cup Series inventory on FS1 and USA Network was in fact completely unaffected by the additions of Amazon and WBD, as the networks will carry the same number of races (19) in the new deal as in the old.
It is risky to completely abandon cable, even with its declining subscriber numbers. It is in fact because of those declining subscriber numbers that the traditional media companies — saddled with cable networks that were more attractive 20 years ago than today — are more willing to pay substantial rights fees than the streamers. The life of a cable network sans-live sports is bleak, consisting largely of old sitcoms and procedurals that are sometimes airing at the same time on other networks.
It would be easier for the leagues to cut ties if cable was losing viewership at the same rate as subscribers, but sports viewership has been remarkably resilient to the erosion of the bundle — making it fairly apparent that most of those who have ‘cut the cord’ were not regular sports viewers. “Sports fans were not the ones that were leaving the bundle,” NASCAR Senior Vice President, Broadcasting & Innovation Brian Herbst told SMW during the offseason, “because we were still posting pretty strong numbers on cable each year.”
Both Fox Sports and NBC Sports had to pare back their inventory to make room for Amazon and WBD, but did so by cutting back on their broadcast network races. FOX will carry just five Cup Series races per season (including the preseason “Clash”) and NBC four, with the total of nine marking the fewest over-the-air since NASCAR assumed control of its media rights from the tracks.
The expendable exposure of broadcast television
Between broadcast, cable and streaming, it is broadcast that will have the fewest races in the new deal. This season includes 29 races that will require a cable subscription or direct-to-subscriber streaming service, with the five TNT/Max races counting toward both.
NASCAR has kept some of its blue-chip races on broadcast this season, including obvious ones like both stops at Daytona, both stops at Talladega and the season finale at Phoenix. Yet for a seven-month stretch from March 2 (COTA on FOX) through October 19 (Talladega on NBC), there will be only two races on broadcast. It is a risk for a sport that reached the height of its popularity primarily on FOX in the mid-2000s.
At the height of that NASCAR boom in 2005, then-Fox Sports executive Ed Goren observed the changing fortunes of NASCAR and the then-slumping NBA. NASCAR, he said, had basically become “a network sport” while the NBA “for whatever their reasons were, [went] from a predominantly network sport to a predominantly cable sport … I think the numbers speak for themselves.” NASCAR is now a predominantly cable and streaming sport, but the internal expectations are that any short-term ratings pain will pay off in the long run.
“For the races where we will no longer have a broadcast window and we shift that to cable or streaming, I think at least in year one, you probably have a little bit of a reset on some of those races,” Herbst told SMW, noting that races on broadcast typically average about 1.5 million more viewers than those on cable. “To the extent that you have more cable inventory, I expect a little bit of reset on at least those races in 2025, but we think that the opportunity that we have over the midterm and long term by bringing on additional streaming companies in WBD and Amazon, will pay dividends.”
Herbst touted the “marketing muscle” afforded by NASCAR’s three new partners, and that became quickly evident on Saturday — when TNT promoted the Daytona 500 on FOX during its NBA All-Star Saturday coverage, not merely by running an ad during a commercial break, but by having host Ernie Johnson read a promo over a full-screen graphic.
That, of course, was the final NBA All-Star Saturday Night on TNT. Next season, that event will air on the NBC broadcast network, part of an NBA media deal that dramatically increases the league’s over-the-air exposure. While the NBA and NASCAR deals share in common a diversified approach, the broadcast network aspect is markedly different. While NASCAR has scaled back, the NBA will more-than-triple its broadcast inventory next season from around 20 regular season games this year to 70 per season in the new contract.
The reach vs. revenue calculation
The NBA had a key advantage over NASCAR, hundreds of games each season that were not allotted to national TV — giving it the ability to feed cable, broadcast and streaming at the expense of the unstable RSN industry. NASCAR has a 36-race Cup schedule (38 including the “Clash” and All-Star Race) and no realistic ability to expand that further, meaning that when it came time to diversify into streaming, it had no choice but to sacrifice broadcast network exposure, which, somewhat paradoxically, is expendable.
One of the primary reasons why sports rights are so lucrative is that they create appointment programming on platforms that viewers would not ordinarily watch. The broadcast networks, whether through familiarity, ease of access, local ties or simply tradition, are less in need of that appointment programming than are cable networks — for which such programming is existential — or expansion-minded streamers. Even for the NBA, it is almost certain that NBC committed to a massive, 50-game regular season schedule largely to secure programming for Peacock, which will not only simulcast all of NBC’s games but carry an extensive schedule of its own.
What the NBA was able to do — increase both reach and revenue in the same deal — is rare. Typically, teams and leagues trade one for the other.
One might notice that no rights fee has been publicly revealed for IndyCar’s deal with Fox Sports, which provides greater over-the-air exposure than any racing league has had in years. IndyCar CEO Mark Miles said last year that the league “did not do the deal which would have afforded us the greatest rights fee,” adding that while the deal made “economic sense,” it was more about “our willingness to invest by taking less for the growth of the sport through the greater reach.”
NASCAR, with its larger audiences and rights fees, is more able to take reach for granted. Thus, what was once a “network sport” begins a new deal that will put it further behind the paywall.
