NASCAR Xfinity Series inks media rights deal starting in 2025

Aug 12, 2023

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The next NASCAR media package has started to take shape.

The CW Network will become the exclusive home to the NASCAR Xfinity Series starting in 2025, the sanctioning body wrote in a release Friday. The deal will reportedly run through the 2031 season and will carry 33 Xfinity races per year, plus practice and qualifying events.

This is the first time in Xfinity Series history that each Xfinity race will be available on free, over-the-air broadcast television, according to the news release. The races will be produced by NASCAR Productions in close collaboration with The CW.

“It’s a big day for NASCAR and CW,” Brian Herbst, senior VP of media and productions for NASCAR, told reporters via Zoom on Friday.

The seven-year deal is worth about $800 million, per a Friday report from Sports Business Journal. Xfinity races draw an average of approximately 1 million viewers per race each season.

This is a big moment for NASCAR, which is operating under a media rights deal that will expire after the 2024 season. The media rights deal is one of the hottest offseason topics for the sanctioning body — especially as team owners try to renegotiate the sport’s financial model and add additional revenue streams.

What made the partnership work?

“I think the differentiating factor for us when we were thinking about the CW and Nexstar, you really get to work with two different companies within the context of one partnership,” Herbst said. “One is the CW free-to-air broadcast network available in 125 million homes, then you also get the benefit of working with Nexstar, which is the largest television group in the United States.

“When you think about our footprint in terms of the tracks that we run on week in and week out, when you think about Nexstar as the TV station group, within our track footprint, 84 percent of our tracks also have a Nexstar station, free-to-air distribution that will only benefit viewership for the Xfinity Series of up-and-coming drivers.”

Herbst added that the second piece to the deal is everything else Nexstar brings as a partner.

That means “on-site activation, local marketing, local coverage, ticketing, contesting, the full kind of event experience and local experience we think will only be benefited by having Nexstar as our partner,” he said.

The Xfinity Series is the tier of racing below Cup, which is NASCAR’s premier series. It is the home of the up-and-coming stars of stock car racing in America: Six of the past 11 Cup champions have also been former Xfinity champions.

Cup and Truck series rights agreements are reportedly expected to close by the fall, and networks Fox and NBC are expected to again be the two main players in those deals.

This is a big milestone, too, for The CW, which is growing its sports footprint. The station, owned by Nexstar, signed a multiyear deal to carry LIV Golf events earlier this year and another deal to carry 50 ACC football and basketball events earlier this month.

“Landing the NASCAR Xfinity Series is a game changer for The CW and our CW Sports division and represents another important building block in our programming strategy,” Dennis Miller, president of The CW, said via release. “Live sports are the most watched television content and with The CW’s national reach, moving NASCAR Xfinity Series to The CW will transform and elevate the viewing experience for the series and its fans.”

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