NASCAR COO Steve O’Donnell called it the “never-ending question.” So how close are NASCAR and its teams on a charter agreement.
“We’re very close,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell was part of a panel Wednesday at the CAA World Congress of Sports in L.A. on how to stay competitive in an ever-changing industry.
“Ultimately, when our owners look at where the sports potential is in terms of all the new media partners, the balance that we do have with linear and now being able to go with the Amazons, [TNT Sports], all the opportunities we have with content, I think they get it,” O’Donnell sad. “Everyone wants to sit down and argue over who’s going to split the money the right way, but ultimately we’ll get to a good place.”The original charter agreement was negotiated in 2015, the first year of NASCAR’s current 10-year media rights agreement that expires after 2024.
Three people familiar with the teams’ thinking all said they disagreed with O’Donnell’s assessment of a deal being “very close.” One of the people noted that there’s meetings coming up between NASCAR and the Race Team Alliance in the next couple weeks, but that there’s still significant issues that are not yet resolved.
