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Deal with the future

Jerry Bonkowski

NASCAR's new TV deal will take it through the 2014 season. We take an off-kilter look at what NASCAR might look like when that deal expires.

Hi everyone, I'm reporting from the site of the season-ending 2014 Daytona 500, as NASCAR's blockbuster $4.5 billion, eight-year television contract with Fox, Turner Network Television and ABC/ESPN comes to an end.

A lot has changed in the nearly decade-long contract, first announced Dec. 7, 2005, and implemented 14 months later in early February 2007.

Let's review what has happened since:

  • The man who engineered the mega-deal, Brian France, quit as chairman and CEO of NASCAR just before the start of the 2008 season to become majority owner of the now six-year-old Los Angeles franchise in the National Football League.

Even though he knew he was abandoning the series to fulfill his lifelong dream of going Hollywood, France tried not to stray too far away from his stock car racing roots. Not only did he name his team the Lugnuts, he also designed the team's uniforms out of used checkered and yellow flags that NASCAR had left over in a locked-up utility cabinet in Daytona Beach.

"Waste not, want not," France said. "'Any way we can save a few dollars, we do it. That's a very valuable lesson I learned while at NASCAR.'

  • Longtime NASCAR president Mike Helton took over for France as the first non-family member to run the sanctioning body, but he lasted all of three seasons before deciding to cash in his profit-sharing and open a Starbucks in the upscale new Bill France Jr. Mall in Daytona Beach.

"I was getting tired of all the travel and all the headaches," Helton said when he announced his retirement. "And having to keep calling Kevin Harvick and Robby Gordon into the NASCAR trailer every week just got to be too much. Now all I have to worry about are mochas and lattes – and they don't argue with me."

  • Lesa France Kennedy, Brian's sister, ultimately replaced Helton – but only because no one else wanted the job. When Kennedy took over, she uttered these infamous words: "Ask not what NASCAR can do for you, but what you can do for NASCAR."

That was shortly before the sanctioning body announced the formation of a new religion to better serve religious fans, especially on race days – although some folks still to this day think it was just a ploy to steal collection baskets from other religions. The new congregation – called the Church of the Almighty Buck, sponsored by Sprint presented by Nextel – has struggled at times, especially in its bid to obtain tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service as a religious organization and charity.

No matter how hard NASCAR tries, the IRS insists that requiring fans to tithe at least 10 percent of their income to the France family's favorite charity – namely, the France Family – is not acceptable.

  • The schedule increased dramatically under the eight-year TV deal, with NASCAR going from 36 races to 52. Pushing that increase was Monday Night NASCAR on ABC. It also helped that the sport moved into international competition in Mexico, Canada, Cuba, Iceland, Monaco and Lichtenstein.

"Having so many new international partners, we felt it was important for us to become a global operation rather than just stay as a good ol' boy group," Brian France said before heading to L.A. "Hey, other companies outsourced a lot of their work to places like India and the Far East, so we figured what better way to bring in more fans than to do business with those countries – and save ourselves a lot of cash, as well. I tell you, I love outsourcing."

  • Up next: NASCAR will be moving into mainland China. A rumored 20-year deal with ESPN Beijing is on the table. Just think, over 1 billion more potential NASCAR fans.

  • Everyone involved in the eight-year TV deal became obscenely wealthy, from the France family to all the top executives at ESPN/ABC, TNT and Fox. So many executives took golden-parachute buyouts during the course of the deal that it looked like the invasion at Normandy.

  • To maximize profits and viewership, NASCAR shifted the season-opening Daytona 500, an institution for decades, to the season finale in 2011, in essence trading races with Homestead, Fla., which has now hosted the new season-opening Ford 400 for the last four years. In so doing, and to add a little more excitement to the Chase for the Sprint presented by Nextel Cup, NASCAR also removed restrictor plates from the cars, allowing them to hit speeds of over 230 mph.

As Helton said before he retired, "The plates came off and the speeds and TV ratings both went up. It's a win-win situation for everyone."

  • A bane for networks during the first mega-contract from 2001 through 2006 – TV commercials interrupting important on-track action – was solved when Fox, TNT and ESPN/ABC went to split-screen broadcasts.

Originally, the picture-in-picture format had a small window that followed all the ongoing action in each race wrapped within a larger window that featured commercials. But by the time the eight-year contract was closing out, things had done a 360-degree turn, with the small window containing commercials, surrounded by non-stop race action in the larger window.

It's no wonder that NASCAR's fan base, which was estimated at 75 million back in 2005, has jumped to 250 million, both in the U.S. and internationally.

And now we come full-circle, back to Daytona, where the soon-to-end contract was signed, sealed and delivered on that early December day back in 2005. NASCAR is preparing to announce its new, long-term deal in the next few days that will take it through 2050, a package reported to be worth more than $100 billion and which will air almost 5,000 hours of race action, archived material and other ancillary shows annually.

And with the other deals currently in place with Sirius Satellite Radio, NASCAR.com and other affiliated partners, we're hearing that Brian France may be making a comeback of sorts. He's thinking of leaving the NFL, where he replaced Commissioner Paul Tagliabue just six months ago, to make a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Well, that's it for now from NASCAR's palatial new 24-carat gold headquarters in Daytona Beach – which will soon be renamed NASCAR Beach because the sanctioning body bought naming rights to the city.

Thanks for watching.