NASCAR reaches 7-year, $7.7B media rights deal

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — NASCAR has added two new partners and streaming elements to a seven-year media rights deal announced Wednesday that will run from 2025 through the 2031 season.

The new media rights deal is worth $7.7 billion when the previously announced $1.1 billion agreement with CW is included, according to Sports Business Journal. NASCAR did not reveal monetary figures at the news conference held at the Music City Center one day before its season-ending awards ceremony.

“We are super excited about what 2025 is going to bring to us because of where the distribution that we now have across air, which is a combination of obviously broadcast, cable and streaming,” NASCAR president Steve Phelps said. “We want to meet race fans where they are or potentially where they are. We think this group does exactly that for us.”

The Cup Series will keep existing partners Fox Sports and NBC, while Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon have joined the package. SBJ said the average annual value of the new deal is a 40% increase over the 10-year, $8.2 billion deal NASCAR has with Fox and NBC that expires at the end of the 2024 season.

“Our industry comes together better than any other sports property when there’s a mountain to climb,” Phelps said.

As part of the deals, Fox will get 14 Cup Series races annually in the first portion of the season, including the Daytona 500. From there, the next five Cup races will be on Amazon Prime Video, marking the first time in NASCAR history its top series will be exclusively streamed.

Warner Bros. Discovery will take over after Amazon’s races and carry the next five races. Those will be simulcast on TNT and streamed on the Max service.

NBC Sports will complete the season with the final 14 races.

Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon also both obtained exclusive rights to practice and qualifying sessions for the entire Cup Series schedule through 2031. Prime Video will stream practice and qualifying live for the first half of the season through their last race of the midseason series — except for the exhibition Busch Light Clash, the Daytona 500 and NASCAR All-Star Race, which will be aired by Fox Sports.

TNT Sports’ portion will stream the remainder of the season’s practice and qualifying sessions on Max while they also air on truTV. NASCAR in July announced a deal to move the second-tier Xfinity Series to CW, which will air 33 live races from 2025 through 2031. The CW also will televise practice and qualifying events each weekend.

The previous deal gave the first 18 races to Fox while NBC aired 20 races.