Jordan’s battle against the NASCAR “monopoly”.
For a few days the world of American motorsport has been focused on a battle – which has now also become legal – with unpredictable consequences. Two teams participating in the NASCAR Cup Series championship, the queen category of American motorsport, have in fact decided to file an anti-trust lawsuit against NASCAR itself in the federal court of North Carolina. The teams are 23XI and Front Row Motorsport, but the news has also gone viral in Europe because one of the co-owners of 23XI is the former NBA superstar Michael Jordan, who since 2021 has crowned his great passion for car racing by founding a team together with driver Denny Hamlin.
For a few weeks the two teams have been battling NASCAR and have refused to bow to the ultimatum imposed by the championship organizers for the ratification of the new charter agreement. To simplify a lot, but to make this dynamic understandable to a public less accustomed to American races, it is a sort of ‘Concord Agreement’ which however is sanctioned between NASCAR and the various teams participating in the championship. A charter guarantees entry into the grid at each race and therefore the possibility of obtaining a part of the prize money and being able to compete for success in the championship.
The demands of the dissident teams: more collegiality, transparency and profit sharing
However, charters are given to teams ‘on loan’ and remain the property of NASCAR, which can potentially arbitrarily decide to take them away from a team if it fails to meet various requirements. On this point, for example, the teams asked for permanent charters to be granted in the new agreement, while NASCAR’s ultimatum came with an offer – signed by 13 out of 15 teams, excluding the two dissidents – of seven guaranteed seasons plus a possible extension of another seven. Then, as always in these disputes, there is no lack of economic issues: the teams asked for greater collegiality in decisions on the technical regulations (which can obviously lead to increases in costs) and greater balance in the distribution of proceeds, which are currently very unbalanced in favor of the NASCAR thanks to the fact that the organizing body of the championship also owns over half of the circuits where it competes.
The antitrust lawsuit filed by Jordan and his team – along with Front Row Motorsport – against NASCAR and its CEO Jim France – whose family has run the championship since its founding, is not without criticism regarding the opacity in fund management – claims the championship organization and its leadership have used anti-competitive practices to prevent fair competition in the sport. “NASCAR and the France family operate without transparency, have stifled competition and control the sport in ways that unfairly benefit them at the expense of team owners, drivers, sponsors, partners and fans through anti-competitive practices,” it said. reads in the official note released by the teams.
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