NASCAR Cup Series in-season tournament to debut during 2025 season
The NASCAR Cup Series will have an in-season tournament next year that will pay the winning driver $1 million, NASCAR announced Monday.
The 32-driver bracket-style format will see drivers seeded based on their results in the final three races of Amazon Prime Video’s portion of the season. The tournament will take place over TNT Sports’ five Cup races next year.
This follows the success of the NBA’s in-season tournament, which debuted this past season.
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NASCAR has not announced the 2025 Cup schedule but one of the races in the tournament on TNT is expected to be the Chicago street race. NASCAR’s three-year contract with the city of Chicago calls for the event to be held July 6, 2025.
Beginning in 2025, Fox Sports will air the first 14 Cup races. Amazon Prime Video will do the next five races, followed by TNT’s five races. NBC Sports will broadcast the final 14 races of the season.
“With the launch of our new media rights partnerships in 2025, we were excited to partner with Prime Video and TNT Sports to collaborate on fan engagement concepts that drive storylines in our sport and innovation from a production perspective,” said Brian Herbst, NASCAR SVP, Media and Productions, in a statement from NASCAR. “The idea of an in-season tournament has been discussed within the NASCAR industry and as we started to focus on adding promotional elements that drive interest throughout the season, we were excited by the opportunity to leverage the marketing weight of Amazon and TNT Sports to bring this concept to life.”
