In the recent spate of “netlet” rights deals, Nexstar’s The CW may have landed the biggest fish yet — NASCAR’s entire Xfinity Series.
NASCAR and Nexstar have reached a seven-year media rights deal that will give The CW exclusive rights to the NASCAR Xfinity Series starting in 2025 and running through 2031, per Sports Business Journal. Nexstar will pay $115 million per year, according to the report.
There had previously been reporting that NASCAR was open to selling the entire Xfinity Series to a streaming service. Instead the full Xfinity Series schedule will be available over-the-air, which has historically been a priority for the series.
Per SBJ, NASCAR will produce the races but Nexstar will hire the talent.
NASCAR is the biggest of Nexstar’s sports properties, a thin but growing list that includes LIV Golf and a package of Raycom-produced ACC football games. In an agreement not previously mentioned on this site, The CW has also acquired rights to the longtime NFL studio show “Inside the NFL” starting in September.
Over the past year, Nexstar and Scripps have remade their long-ignored ‘netlets’ — The CW and ION, respectively — into contenders for lower and mid-tier sports rights. Scripps’ deals include a weekly night of WNBA games and on the local level, rights to the Vegas Golden Knights.
Prior to the past year, The CW had never carried any live sporting events. The channel originated as a combination of The WB and UPN, the latter of which carried XFL games in 2001.
(News from Sports Business Journal 7.28, additional info from NFL Communications 6.7)
