After a decade with FOX and NBC carrying the NASCAR Cup Series, the top level of stock car racing will be aired across six different platforms from 2025 to 2031 as part of a lucrative television rights deal worth USD$7.7 billion (7.068 billion euros).
“These agreements not only show NASCAR’s importance to the sports and entertainment ecosystem, but also the willingness of some of the world’s largest and most respected media companies to make significant investments in America’s leading motorsport,” commented Brian Herbst, NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Media and Productions. “The media landscape is rapidly evolving, with new distribution platforms providing more options to the consumer than ever before. This is the right mix of media partners to promote and deliver content around our sport, positioning NASCAR for growth across different mediums and giving our fans uninterrupted access on the established platforms that they are already using. We are excited to work with this best-in-class group of media companies to deliver the best of NASCAR racing and the excitement of live sports to our fans.”
FOX and NBC will return as the main broadcast partners, though with reduced races on over-the-air TV as they increase focus on their cable networks FS1 and USA. Five races including the season-opening Daytona 500 will be on FOX while the other nine are on FS1, while NBC airs four and USA covers the other ten. Both networks bookend the season, with NBC taking over the final fourteen races including all ten playoff events.
For the midseason portion, Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery‘s TNT Sports get ten races apiece. Amazon Prime Video, which will be NASCAR’s first streaming service partner, already carries various sports such as the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, the ATP Tour, and the Premier League. TNT returns to NASCAR after a decade away, having previously split coverage as part of a package deal with NBC from 2001 to 2014.
Amazon and Max, formerly known as HBO Max, will stream practice and qualifying. The latter will do so via the Bleacher Report Sports Add-On app.
2024 marks the end of NASCAR’s current ten-year deal with FOX and NBC. Also starting in 2025, the Xfinity Series will be exclusively carried by The CW, while Craftsman Truck Series races will remain an FS1 production for the full season.
