Dale Earnhardt Jr.: NASCAR on NBC TV contract has expired, seeking new deal
Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s NASCAR race broadcasting contract with NBC ended in 2023 and hasn't yet been renewed, he said on his podcast Tuesday.
Earnhardt has been a race analyst for NASCAR races on NBC since 2018, his first year of retirement. On Tuesday's episode of The Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt said he was interested in returning to the broadcast booth with NBC but is keeping his options open.
"(The contract) was up at the end of last year. I'm currently working through what that looks like for me," Earnhardt said. "I definitely love being in the broadcast booth and want to continue to doing that. We've had some great conversations with all of NASCAR's TV partners. My home and my love is at NBC, and I'd love to be back with them. So we'll see where it goes.
"But right now, I really don't have a job in terms of broadcasting."
Earnhardt's work with NBC has been well-regarded, and his brand and experience lends a lot of weight to the broadcast that includes play-by-play announcer Rick Allen and analysts Steve Letarte and Jeff Burton in the booth. Earnhardt, a 15-time Most Popular Driver, is also immensely popular with NASCAR fans, some six seasons after his final full-time Cup Series season.
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His multimedia company, Dirty Mo Media, is a growing part of the media landscape in NASCAR, especially in podcasting. NBC has featured abbreviated episodes of The Dale Jr. Download on its related channels and full interviews on Peacock, and Earnhardt has hosted two seasons of Lost Speedways (produced by Dirty Mo Media) on Peacock as a part of their deal with Earnhardt. He said Tuesday that full episodes of his podcast will be on YouTube while his future gets settled.
NASCAR is adding two TV partners for Cup races in 2025; Amazon Prime and WBD will split 10 races in the middle of the season with full-season qualifying and practice sessions added in as a part of a deal that runs through 2031. CW Network is also being added as the full-season home of the Xfinity Series starting in 2025.
Earnhardt will have options and should be the biggest target for those companies as they create their NASCAR broadcasting teams, should he not return to NBC. NBC and USA Network's portion of the 2024 NASCAR schedule begins June 16 with the first Cup race at Iowa Speedway.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Dale Earnhardt Jr's NBC TV contract for NASCAR races expired, he says
