The real reason franchising won’t happen in NASCAR
That's the big upside to franchising, a system of ownership prevalent in most major North American sports leagues, and a practice that has yet to find a place in NASCAR. Yes, team owners have to pay big to get in; Charlotte food-service mogul Jerry Richardson paid a $140 million franchise fee to land the Carolina Panthers in 1993. But that investment offers a certain level of protection, an asset that can be traded in when times are tough. When Quebec Nordiques principal owner Marcel Aubut found himself strapped for cash in one of the NHL's smallest markets in 1994, he still walked away with $103 million after selling to a group of Denver investors.
Owners in NASCAR have no such safety net. They risk losing everything if sponsorship dries up, which is exactly what happened to legendary car owner Bud Moore. The Spartanburg native, who stormed the beach at Normandy in World War II, won a pair of championships in NASCAR's premier division. But when the sponsors went away in the late 1990s, so did Bud Moore Engineering, and all its history. The assets of a team that had fielded cars for Joe Weatherly, Bobby Allison, David Pearson and Dale Earnhardt were sold for pennies on the dollar at auction.
Beyond the natural questions — how many franchises do you award? What's the franchising fee? Are existing teams grandfathered in? — there's the natural resistance from NASCAR, which doesn't want to limit who can compete in its sport. Had franchising been in effect, the sanctioning body argues, men like Joe Gibbs might never have had the opportunity to own race teams. Never mind that Gibbs, now that he's part of the sport, is all for franchising. And never mind that directives like the top 35 rule and the impending four-car cap are even more exclusionary than franchising would be. More at NASCAR.com