One of the worst kept secrets in motorsports has finally been made official.
The High Limit Sprint Car Series, owned by four-time World of Outlaws champion Brad Sweet and 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson, has acquired the All Stars Circuit of Champions from NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart.
As detailed here, this outcome has felt inevitable for well over a year since the High Limit Sprint Car Series was founded as a big money midweek series that would air on the FloSports digital streaming platform.
With growing tensions between national Sprint Car teams and the World of Outlaws over purse and contingency programs, it always seemed like there could be an avenue for a series owned by this many heavyweights to create an alternative.
That is certainly the case in the Dirt Late Model scene where there are two national tours in the World of Outlaws Late Models and Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series. However, the Late Model landscape is just more economically viable than Sprint Cars, with enough teams to support two national divisions.
Sprint Cars, while experiencing a healthy growth and resurgence in the digital streaming era, is not quite as popular as Dirt Late Models.
A supersized High Limit Sprint Car Series enhanced by the structural foundation of the more regionalized All Stars Circuit of Champions risked something akin to the Indy Racing League split from CART that irreversibly damaged open wheel pavement racing in the United States.
It still hasn’t recovered.
The press release announcing the acquisition said a 2024 schedule and roster announcement would be forthcoming. That’s where all of this gets tricky for the Sprint Car industry.
World of Outlaws protects its hegemony within Sprint Car racing with its platinum agreement with its full-time competitors. To be eligible for the championship fund and contingency program bonuses, teams must enter into a contract with the series that makes them largely exclusive to World of Outlaws with only a handful of exceptions.
Effectively, if you want to be a full-time World of Outlaws contender, that precludes being able to do anything more than a handful of races across High Limit, the All Stars or major events like the Eldora Million that took place at Eldora Speedway this past summer.
This is to protect World of Outlaws and its DirtVision streaming platform, with the industry understanding that the series becomes less important or prestigious if these racers can regularly be seen on other platforms like FloRacing.
But, from a team standpoint, the purse has to reflect that exclusivity and teams insist the purses do not reflect what they believe the World Racing Group sanctioning body makes on streaming revenues. In response, World Racing Group says teams do not fully understand the overhead of DirtVision and series operation, while also overstating what teams believe their revenue is.
In selling the series, Stewart says Sweet and Larson are more equipped to grow the discipline than the current status quo.
“They are trying to make the future of Sprint Car racing stronger, and they are trying to do what some promoters haven’t worried about at all.
“There are some series owners who don’t give a flying “F” about the competitors, and their actions have shown that,” Stewart told Sprint Car Unlimited on Monday. “So, for me, if it was going to go to anybody, it’s going to go to two guys who are passionate about the sport and its longevity.”
There isn’t much reading between the lines there.
Numerous teams within World of Outlaws and the All Stars Circuit of Champions have privately expressed interest in racing in an expanded High Limit Series should it ever come to fruition, which now it has.
Competition is healthy but it also risks creating a divide that muddies the water and that is surely front of mind with Sweet, Larson and FloRacing executives.
It will also be interesting to see how World Racing Group responds over the off-season, and to what extent it will try to sweeten the pot to keep teams racing with World of Outlaws, and how the bonus packages compared from one series to the other.
Will the new High Limit Series remain a super-regional with most of its events in Ohio and Pennsylvania or will it expand westward or even towards New England or Canada? If High Limit becomes more of a national series, who will then occupy the super-regional role or even the midweek role that the ASCoC and High Limit once occupied?
Will either series feel like a major if the biggest teams are split somewhat evenly? Can there truly be two marquee series with both series feeling equally important?
Ultimately, the biggest question to come from all of this if this will ultimately strengthen national Sprint Car racing or weaken it.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.