Brad Keselowski explains the 'killer' factor in NASCAR charter negotiations

NASCAR and race teams remain at a standstill in charter negotiations with the current agreement set to come to an end after the 2024 Cup Series season.

While a plethora of issues are being discussed by both sides, including permanent charters and revenue split from the new media rights deal, Brad Keselowski, co-owner of RFK Racing, believes teams’ issues stem from one word: inflation. Speaking with Kevin Harvick on his “Happy Hour” podcast, Keselowski said that “well managed teams are losing money” under the current model and “that’s a problem.”

“I honestly think the Next Gen car itself was a wash between the difference of third party versus internal manufacturing,” Keselowski said. “I think just inflation itself has been the killer. And so, that drives the charter negotiation. Because teams are just screaming like we have a huge deficit with our budgets. And so, that kind of puts the whole charter negotiation in a unique place where the teams are just thinking how are we gonna pay for this?

“Then the new TV market. And that’s changing almost every day, has put another wrench in that because the more we move off of broadcast and move to streaming services, the harder it is to kind of get to partners and get them engaged the way we wanna get them engaged. But that comes at a tradeoff because now there’s more money. The streaming services — they pay the teams or NASCAR more money. And that transcends with the other teams and passes through.

“So, there’s all kinds of tradeoffs. At the end of the day, the conversation is mostly about how do we create a stable platform to where the teams aren’t losing money. Specifically, how teams that are well managed don’t lose money. And there are well managed teams that are losing money and that’s a problem.”

Denny Hamlin calls out NASCAR’s ‘crazy’ charter model

Under the current model, charters are not permanent franchises like the setup in other professional sporting leagues. Teams can lose their charters due to poor performance on the racetrack or failing to field their cars each week. As a result, most teams lose money on a yearly basis. Teams argue that by not having permanent charters, it makes it more difficult to attract outside investors and invest in their operations.

Teams currently get 25% of broadcast revenue, tracks 65% and NASCAR 10%.; they are hoping to secure at least half of the revenue TV brings in. NASCAR notably announced $7.7 billion in media rights deals with FOX Sports, NBC, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon for 2025-2031.

NASCAR recently offered a new proposal in writing to race teams. Per Denny Hamlin, the sanctioning body’s proposal didn’t reflect their discussions. A frustrated Hamlin said that negotiations feel like they’re going backwards rather than forward.

“It just seems to be going backwards time after time,” Hamlin said. “The newest and latest is not very good. So, it just seems that we always take one step forward and two steps back. I just don’t know the reason for it. It was very interesting because we had one-on-one meetings with NASCAR executives. We felt like those meetings went well and we thought we were heard. And then you get a document that doesn’t cover any of the things that we talked about. And actually not cover those things, but actually starts clawing back more on their side from us. It’s certainly not a good feeling for sure.

“It’s frustrating.”