For more than two years, the racing teams and NASCAR have essentially been at a standstill about the financial future of the sport. In sporadic talks between the sides, NASCAR has offered a modestly larger share of its new broadcast contract to the teams. But it has balked at the teams’ request that it share revenue from any future money streams like gambling, and it has refused their calls to make permanent the charters that teams must own to operate their cars.
Teams, most of which lose money each year under the current model, said that this hurt their ability to prepare for the future, scared investors away and made operations tenuous at a time when NASCAR seemed flush.
But the continuing dispute is not just about revenue. It’s about competing visions for stock car racing. Will it remain popular but provincial or will it recast itself to be more like a major sports league?
NASCAR declined to make an executive available to comment for this article, but in November, Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s president, said that his organization wanted “to change the paradigm for our race teams and we need to make sure our race teams are profitable, competing on the racetracks.
