NASCAR is well aware of the power of its product and is trying to leverage it to force a pair of prominent media giants to fork over a huge sum of money to broadcast a small sample of their races.
Racing in general has seen a notable uptick in viewership and interest in the United States over the last decade, but none is more popular than NASCAR. The brand offers a variety of circuits in Xfinity, Truck Series, and the Cup Series, and has a plethora of drivers and teams that are household names. It offers the type of product that media companies greatly desire.
In an era where content is king, sports leagues and entertainment companies are making huge sums of money by selling off the rights to parts of their broadcast products, and NASCAR is looking to follow suit by putting portions of their various circuit schedules up for grabs to the highest bidder.
Amazon and Warner Bros. fighting for package of NASCAR races
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery are among a trio of media goliaths that are in a bidding war to try and land the rights to a set of six to eight races that would air during the summer months.
The outlet revealed that Warner Bros. Discovery is hoping to make the content a core part of its summer sports offering and filler when the NBA is in its offseason. The network has previously worked with the popular racing brand and aired events on TNT as recently as 2015.
It was also reported that those rights are up to grabs instead of the larger packages with more races because NASCAR’s current TV partners FOX and NBC are close to renewing their contracts that end in 2024. The current deal nets the series $820 million a year from the media giants.