Commissioner Steve Phelps releases statement on NASCAR lawsuit, financial records

Earlier today, NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps gave the yearly State of the Sport address. He was joined by President Steve O’Donnell. During the address, Phelps read a prepared statement regarding the ongoing antitrust lawsuit.

NASCAR is now in a position where their financials are public record. That’s just plain and out there for everyone to see. They made roughly $100M in income for the 2024 season. The statement gives a clear look at how the leadership at NASCAR views this situation.

“From the outset, we’ve been clear, this is not an anti-trust case,” Phelps read from the prepared statement. “The 2025 charter agreement is an improvement on the 2016 framework with enhancements that reflect real progress for teams and the sport, including over $3 billion in guaranteed payments to the teams, enterprise value that is roughly $1.5 billion now to the race teams, guaranteed starting positions each week that allow teams to sell sponsorship on the best billboards in sports, the Next Gen car, and charters guaranteed for 14 years until at least 2039, plus an obligation to negotiate in good faith beyond that.

“The bottom line here is NASCAR is committed to charters. I also want to be clear: the France family started NASCAR in 1948 using their own resources, grit and ingenuity. They have taken countless personal and financial risks, investing billions of dollars and untold hours into growing this sport to create opportunity for teams to race in front of fans for nearly eight decades.

“We are proud of what we built for fans together with the race teams, especially since the charters were introduced. As you saw in the race team declarations, the charter system is a critical part of the sport, something we created with and for the teams. We’ll continue to defend and preserve it. Make no mistake, the lawsuit puts this at risk.”

NASCAR Commissioner reasserts lawsuit position

For the most part, Steve Phelps echoed much of what we have heard in the NASCAR lawsuit already. Clearly, the two sides are not eye-to-eye on everything, because if they were, a lawsuit wouldn’t be happening.

Phelps stuck to the company lines. He also made an interesting comment about a potential future appeal.

“We remain committed to doing what is best for the sport of stockcar racing, for the race teams we partner with, the many stakeholders who engage with it, the people throughout the garage that depend on it, and of course the millions of fans that love it like we do, and just want to see more of the best racing in our history,” Phelps continued.

“Although we’d prefer this lawsuit was never brought to us, we remain confident in our case before a jury and, if necessary the Fourth Circuit. We remain optimistic that we can continue to work towards a resolution to this litigation that allows us to return our focus to racing, which is what we all want.

“The financials of this sport have been unsealed and made available to the court. It may sound counterintuitive, but that’s not something we at NASCAR are hiding from. In fact, I encourage you to really think about what you’re seeing and how it comes to life each weekend for fans, partners and race teams.”

This lawsuit will go beyond trial if NASCAR loses. An appeal is almost guaranteed. Phelps bringing up the Fourth Circuit all but confirms that. Just how far up will this case go?

Phelps sticks up for France family in statement

Of course, Steve Phelps talked about the France family. The owners of NASCAR, they are at the heart of this lawsuit.

“Our goal has always been to create the best fan and partner experience in sports. We invest in that every year through our people, our tracks, the racing product and how we run the business. It’s been a guiding principle for almost 80 years and four generations of France family stewardship.

“With that in mind, I’d like to highlight a few fundamental points about this litigation, the business of NASCAR. NASCAR is more than just the Cup Series. Our business includes other national series, and we support both regional and international series.

“Our sport is built on families, relationships, and trust that we earn every day. We depend on each other as partners, promoters and fan ambassadors for motorsports. Some of them accepted less to accommodate the new charter agreement, families like the Smith family, who run Speedway Motorsports, the Mattioli family at Pocono, and Roger Penske at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“NASCAR’s balance sheet has more than $1.2 billion in invested capital, meaning the vast majority of what we make is invested back into the sport, our race teams and our people. It’s the core principle of how we operate and a recognition of our importance in motorsports broadly.

“Between track operations, new races, safety administration of the sport, charter payments and taxes across our multi-state operations, our role as the sanctioning body requires tremendous and often unpredictable expenses. Ensuring we have adequate funds to cover unforeseen circumstances or opportunity for expansion is critical and responsible business.

“We have significant debt payments from the IC merger that transformed our business and our schedule, as well as other business-critical liabilities that ensure we can operate the sport year to year.”

Remaining statement from NASCAR Commissioner

Here is the remainder of the statement. Neither Steve from NASCAR took questions afterward.

“We aren’t like other sports in this regard. We have unique commitments. Teams receive about $1.1 billion per year from their sponsors and from NASCAR combined. In the charter negotiation, we hope to better align our collective futures around a model that facilitates mutual growth through three main ideas: increase revenue for the teams, which has happened. Agreed-upon cost structure.

“Costs of materials for building the cars is down about 40%, and we work with teams on a cost structure, but haven’t yet come up with a formula that we agree upon. And then the Driver Ambassador Program and sending driver participation to join us in growing the sport.

“We believe our charters are fair and equitable. We did our best to support the race teams without destabilizing our sport and compromising our ability to deliver for fans well into the future.

“NASCAR is fully aligned with our race team partners who have submitted declarations hoping to end this litigation. We are trying our hardest. I am trying my hardest both as a fan as well as the commissioner of this sport that I’ve loved since I was five years old.

“While two of the teams of 15 teams may not share that view and seem set on an unfortunate court battle, I hope that we can all agree that our racing is as good as it has ever been and we care about how we serve our fans, especially as we look forward to capping off our season by celebrating new champions across all of our national series.”