While the quotes provided during a Wednesday morning press conference were informative, the interview Jeffrey Kessler provided SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Wednesday was downright candid.
Kessler is the lawyer representing both 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports, the teams that did not sign NASCAR’s final revenue sharing and sporting governance (charter) agreement extension and are now bringing forth an antitrust lawsuit against the sanctioning body.
The interview was conducted by Dave Moody, who works for NASCAR owned Motor Racing Network as a turn announcer, and also hosts a decade long daily talk show, SiriusXM Speedway, where this conversation took place.
What are the claims?
“So this is an antitrust case. The antitrust laws are laws that regulate fair competition. One of the things the antitrust laws prohibit is somebody getting a monopoly, which means you are the only competitor through unfair anti-competitive means.
“NASCAR is the poster child for being an illegal monopoly. It is, as all your fans know, the only premier stock car racing circuit in the country, maybe in the world and it’s got that position not by being the best or by investing money or by having the best thing out there that no one compete with.
‘No, it got there by acquiring its competitors tied up the racetracks so no one else could compete with it. Going to all the teams who are independent contractors and saying you can’t go race at anybody else’s races and imposing restrictions on the cars, that the teams can’t even take their NextGen car and put it in another race.
“So all of this gives them this monopoly power. And what do they do with that power? Well, they’re not like some kind of like benign dictator monopolist. This is what they do: They go to the teams on September 6th and they say to the teams, here is our take it or leave it offer to be a charter team in NASCAR. If you do not take it in the next hour, you are out, you’ll not get a charter. We might even get rid of the charters. We will destroy the whole economics of your organization. So what happens, 13 of the 15 race teams could not take that pressure. They said, well, if the alternative is this bully is gonna crush me if I don’t say yes, I guess I’m saying yes. Two teams had the ability, the fortitude, the resources to say, ‘I am not gonna take this anymore.’
“Someone has gotta hold NASCAR to the same laws that apply to all other businesses. So that was 23XI and Front Row. They hired me and that’s why we filed this case.”