What if no one wants to buy NASCAR? (Update)

Chase Carey

UPDATE It looks like Liberty Media has zero interest in buying NASCAR based on comments of Liberty executives on a quarterly conference call with Wall Street analysts Wednesday.

“NASCAR is a fairly different franchise for us," said Chase Carey, who runs Formula One for Liberty. “You look at the fan base; the regionalization of it in the U.S. is not really even a broad-based U.S. sport.

“Both race cars," Carey said of Formula One and NASCAR. “I’m not sure beyond that there’s a lot that would really make it a natural fit for us. It would certainly give us scale in the U.S., and we could use that scale to build, but I think there probably are more differences than similarities. Our priority is really making Formula One everything it can be."

Formula One’s 21-race schedule this season is spread across the globe, with races in 21 countries on five continents. Eleven races are in Europe and one in the U.S.

Although Colorado-based Liberty Media has previously expressed a desire to grow Formula One racing in the U.S., the company’s CEO, Greg Maffei, also sounded skeptical about a theoretical NASCAR deal.

“I think it’s not as clear what the synergies are between the two assets, and I would note the trends have not been perfect in NASCAR," Maffei said. “Unless we had a good thesis on how and why we could fix them, it’s not an obvious to us."

NASCAR trends have included lower TV ratings, declining attendance revenue and the departure of some sponsors.

Brian France	Lesa France

05/10/18 As first reported by Reuters and confirmed by other sources, the France family has enlisted investment bank Goldman Sachs to explore a possible sale of a majority stake of the sanctioning body.

The question now becomes “what is NASCAR worth and will there be any takers?"

NASCAR has been on a downward spiral the last five years as the star drivers have left the sport. This has led to lower TV ratings and resulted in sponsors dropping out or reducing their involvement.

A good bit of the plummet has to do with Brian France, NASCAR’s CEO and Chairman and his sister Lesa France who orchestrates most of the business deals.

Brian France is aloof, not seen much around the track, unavailable to the media, and his presentation to Earnhardt Jr. in the NASCAR awards ceremony last December made one believe he was on something it was so off the wall.

He has lost many traditional fans for his constant tweaking of the playoff system.

Tracks across the country have reported a combined attendance revenue decline of 54 percent over the past decade.

Monster Energy, NASCAR’s title sponsor, renewed its contract for only a year, after getting a highly-discounted rate to replace Sprint. NASCAR’s deal with Monster called for $20 million a year, compared to the $50 million and $75 million annual deals cut with Sprint.

Long-time sponsor like Home Depot and Lowe’s have left the sport, seeking better marketing value elsewhere.

Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Danica Patrick, Tony Stewart, and Earnhardt have all retired in recent years. Without stars a sport is nothing.

But Goldman Sacks is the best at what they do and if anyone can find a buyer they can. But will the buyer be able to turn around a sport that once rivaled the NFL in TV ratings, but under Brian's leadership is becoming a mere shadow of its once greatness?

And what if there are no buyers? Will Brian and Lesa France eventually run NASCAR into the ground and out of business?

AR1.com has long maintained that there needs to be some consolidation in motorsports – there are too many series fighting for the same sponsor dollars and fans. At some point it's all going to come crumbling down if some of the racing series don't go away in the interest of saving auto racing as a sport. Mark C. reporting for AR1.com