NASCAR: Charter talks continue between NASCAR and teams

NASCAR President Steve Phelps commented on the charter renewal at Friday’s State of the Sport Press conference:

“I’m not going to get into the negotiations, but I will give you kind of where we are to the degree that I can without getting into too much specificity.

If you would ask the race teams do we think we’re making progress with NASCAR on where things stand in the extension of our charters, I think our race teams would say yes.

We understand that race teams want three things. I’ll talk about charters specifically or Cup specifically. Honestly, it’s the same thing for Xfinity and Trucks.

If you think about race teams, what do they want? They want to be competitive on the racetrack, they want to make sure they’re break-even or profitable. As it relates to the charter specifically, they want to increase their enterprise value.

I won’t get into numbers where we stand from an enterprise value standpoint, but when the charters change hands at the end of the year, we know at least one will, there will be a significant multiple that race teams will have from a charter enterprise value standpoint.”

Asked for more details by a reporter, he responded:

“I think the first thing we need to do is get through our media rights. I think the race teams have seen that.

With that said, we’re currently having discussions with our race teams. We had a meeting last Wednesday with a team owner council where the entirety of the meeting was about charters, charter extensions.

We’ve acknowledged that we want to change the paradigm for our race teams and we need to make sure our race teams are profitable, competing on the racetracks. We are interested in having their enterprise value climb, as I said earlier.

No timeline, but we are as we’re finalizing our media rights talking about other portions of what our charters would look like that are not financial.”