Race team owners collectively boycotted a scheduled meeting with NASCAR on Wednesday morning, a sign of their displeasure over stalled negotiations that have blunted progress on a new revenue sharing and charter agreement.According to several parties on both sides of the negotiations, who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, teams and NASCAR have disagreed on making the charter system permanent. That’s a crucial factor for team owners, who have seen the value of charters — essentially franchises that allow them guaranteed spots in the field and money based on their historic performance — skyrocket as new teams attempt to join the Cup Series.But should the charter system disappear, those investments would become worthless. Though teams and NASCAR have reached a point of relative satisfaction over a new revenue sharing model that would see owners receive a greater share of revenue, the charter system model remains a sticking point — with NASCAR chairman Jim France said to be “dead set” against making it permanent, according to one team executive.The existing charter agreement was first implemented prior to the 2016 season and was set to expire after 2020. In February 2020, the sides extended the charter agreement through the end of the 2024 season, which is when NASCAR’s television contracts with Fox Sports and NBC Sports expire.Team owners decided not to participate in the Wednesday meeting, which was a regularly scheduled owners’ council meeting with NASCAR, because they felt it to be unproductive and do not feel NASCAR has been negotiating in good faith in other meetings related to revenue and charters.Owners also want to see greater participation from France and his niece Lesa France Kennedy, who co-own the league. However, according to a person familiar with the list of participants, Jim France was planning to be part of Wednesday’s meeting before it was boycotted.The notion of the meetings not being productive is a sentiment not shared by the NASCAR side, which contends the league agreed to open negotiations one year earlier than the window for talks was contractually required to begin (July 1, 2023). The two sides have already made “significant progress,” there are still three months before negotiations were even supposed to officially start and NASCAR feels owners have continued to escalate the timeline.“NASCAR is committed to open and productive dialogue on a regular basis with all industry stakeholders,” NASCAR said in a statement. “We remain committed to continuing discussions in the spirit of collaboration and with the shared goal of growing our sport for the benefit of all stakeholders.”Wednesday’s 10 a.m. meeting between NASCAR and the team owners’ council was of the sort that takes place roughly every other month and during which the two sides typically discuss various initiatives within the sport and not necessarily the revenue distribution model.Last fall, a team executive group consisting of Jeff Gordon (Hendrick Motorsports), Steve Newmark (RFK Racing), Dave Alpern (Joe Gibbs Racing) and Curtis Polk (the longtime business adviser for 23XI Racing co-owner Michael Jordan) met with the media to outline their concerns with the current economic model.“There’s a total misalignment of interests,” Polk said then. “As a result, the economic model is broken for the teams. … The sustainability of the teams in this sport is not very long term unless we have a fundamental change in the model.”Required reading
NASCAR’s ‘broken’ business model: Why race teams are calling for change
(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

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