Fox CEO confident new NASCAR TV deal is coming

With only part of the NASCAR TV deal revealed beyond 2024, the CEO of Fox believes that an agreement is coming between the two parties. Fox and NASCAR have a long history together. It has been rumored that the relationship will continue.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch apparently thinks negotiations are “very constructive.” Recently he discussed Fox’s sports ventures, including the MLB, WWE, and NASCAR.

While there are certain decisions to make, from a business standpoint, Fox is more than happy to keep NASCAR. In fact, they intend to.

“We’re currently in, I think, the final stages of a very constructive negotiation for our NASCAR renewal, we’d look forward to continuing that, that partnership with NASCAR, Murdoch said to Awful Announcing. “It’s been a great partnership for many years, and, and obviously, you know, NASCAR exceeds our expectations into from, from a ROI [return on investment] point of view.”

Look, ratings aren’t what they used to be. If you go comparing the ratings in the NASCAR TV deal now to 2003, it will be disappointing. But go and look what Law & Order was pulling in back then. Or Friends. TV isn’t king anymore, but there’s still value.

Outside of the NFL, there isn’t a sports league that can pull in 1.5-3 million viewers or more any given weekend for more than two-thirds of the year. The NFL and college football are the only leagues that pulls in massive numbers anymore. NASCAR is for the most part, a distant second, but still second.

Even if college football gets big ratings, the length of the NASCAR season makes it even more valuable. Right now, it looks like the Cup Series will return to NBC and Fox for 2024 and beyond. If that’s the case, I’m sure the Truck Series will remain on Fox. It was already revealed the Xfinity Series would move to The CW in 2025.

NASCAR TV deal coming soon

Regardless of who it is with, the NASCAR TV deal should be soon. 2024 is a year away and I’m sure all parties involved would want this to be wrapped up well before the next season starts. That deal with The CW was worth $800 million for seven years. So, expect the Cup Series deal to be worth well above that.

NASCAR is working on bringing in more viewers, in particular younger viewers. They have a stronghold on the 35-54 demographic and even older than that. However, the coveted 18-34 demographic is still shaky at best.

This is just me thinking out loud, but we know Dana White has a meeting in Arizona (Phoenix?) this week. It might have already happened. The UFC CEO talked earlier this fall about meeting with the NASCAR “powers that be” at the end of October in Arizona.

Who knows what the UFC boss and NASCAR have cooking up together? But it’s interesting that someone with as much entertainment power as Dana White is interested in NASCAR.

The NASCAR TV deal is still up in the air. Everyone is eager to see how new ventures like the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum and Chicago Street Course payoff long-term. Early reports are that people enjoy it, they tune in. But can it keep the pace on a green flag run?