A return to racing action is always welcome in Nascar, but rarely has it felt as necessary as it did at the start of this season. After a turbulent 12 months marked by legal battles, leadership upheaval and sliding viewership, the 2026 campaign offered an opportunity to reset.
The prolonged lawsuit involving 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports finally concluded at the end of last year, and commissioner Steve Phelps stepped away in January. While much has changed, Nascar has entered the new season with reasons for optimism alongside some challenges it can no longer ignore.
A rare peek behind the financial curtain
Nascar has been a private company since it was founded in 1948, which makes financial details notoriously difficult to come by. But unsealed documents released during the court case with two of its teams granted a rare insight into Nascar’s books.
Overall revenue for Nascar hit US$1.7 billion in 2024, though profit fell sharply to US$102.6 million from US$536.7 million the previous year. The earlier figure was significantly inflated by the sale of the majority of the land at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, which netted close to US$500 million.
Nascar-owned assets, including 17 circuits, are valued at US$1.19 billion. Unsurprisingly, a significant portion of the series revenue comes from its media rights deals with NBC, Fox, Prime Video, TNT Sports and The CW, which are worth around US$1.1 billion per year.
Last year’s court case also revealed that Goldman Sachs valued the series at around US$5 billion in 2023. Given the scale of the new broadcast contracts, that figure will likely have increased, which will be particularly pertinent if Nascar pursues the private equity investment Phelps first floated in February 2025.
For the teams, the picture is less comfortable. The current payout model, based on a two-year rolling average of finishing positions, means even a championship win generates limited returns. Kyle Larson’s 2025 title earned Hendrick Motorsports US$2.8 million from the season-ending points fund of US$33.7 million. In total, Nascar paid its teams US$431 million in 2025, with a typical chartered team likely taking home between US$11 million and US$12 million last year.
Yet across 12 teams whose accounts were unsealed in the lawsuit, only five organisations made money in the five years between 2020 and 2024 – and just three generated more than US$1,000,000 per car in that timeframe. According to Fox Sports, the grid lost an average of US$2.2 million per car in 2024, while one team claimed losses of US$10 million per car.
A sponsorship portfolio in transition
Nascar’s sponsorship revenue stood at US$362.34 million in 2024, down from US$425 million in 2023. It took the organisation over a year to find a new premier partner following the departure of Geico, with the series now attempting to recover some commercial momentum.
Freeway Insurance was eventually confirmed as Nascar’s newest premier partner in October, also becoming the series’ official insurance partner and title sponsor of the Cup Series race at Phoenix Raceway. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Geico was reportedly paying US$15 million per year.
Confie-owned Freeway, which has been present in Nascar since 2021 as a sponsor of Mexican driver Daniel Suárez, is the first so-called challenger brand to join the sport’s portfolio of premier partners, joining household names like Coca-Cola, Busch and Xfinity. Each of those companies have extended their commitment to the series since the start of last year.
While Phelps himself acknowledged that Nascar has been “a little bit behind on sponsorship” relative to major US sports leagues, other executives are more bullish. Indeed, chief media and revenue officer Brian Herbst told BlackBook Motorsport that 2025 was “the best sponsorship year that we’ve had in a long, long, long time”.
There is some evidence to back that up. Nascar currently has 56 sponsors in total and has added 14 new league-wide partners since January 2025. That includes all deals signed at the start of this season, but not one-off agreements with Tide and Krispy Kreme for last year’s championship finale in Phoenix or extensions with existing partners. Three of those 14 – Suburban Propane, Miller Industries and Poet – are technical partnerships.
Comcast-owned companies Xumo and Xfinity Mobile joined the series as part of Xfinity’s contract extension, but the telco relinquished the naming rights to Nascar’s second-tier series. O’Reilly Auto Parts has since taken that position, also becoming Nascar’s official auto parts retailer. Sports Business Journal (SBJ) reported that Nascar was seeking US$10 million per year for the new naming rights deal, though it is unclear if this target was met.
Elsewhere, Ram returned to Nascar in its third-tier Truck Series, which could prove strategically significant if the manufacturer joins Chevrolet, Honda and Toyota in the Cup Series.
Nascar is hoping to further boost its sponsorship proposition through the creation of a new Paddock Club-style premium hospitality experience, which was launched ahead of the new season.
Viewership under pressure
According to Ampere Analysis, Nascar’s international media rights are worth just under US$8 million, equal to less than one per cent of its overall broadcast revenue, illustrating the continued importance of its domestic deals.
While the current US$7.7 billion agreement over seven years represented a financial success for the series, spreading coverage across multiple platforms has come at a cost to audiences. A Nascar fan wanting to watch every event can find the first 14 races on Fox, followed by five each on Prime Video and TNT Sports, before NBC shows the final 14 events. And that fragmentation appeared to have a direct impact on the sport’s viewership last year.
The 2018 to 2024 seasons delivered relatively consistent figures after years of declining audiences. However, in 2025, full season viewership fell 14.7 per cent to 2.45 million, the steepest decline since 2018. Regular season viewership were down 15.4 per cent to 2.66 million, while playoff audiences dropped 18.9 per cent to 1.87 million.
With more than five years remaining on the current deals, it may be too early to assess how the declining figures will affect Nascar’s next broadcast negotiation. With the rights not up for renewal from the 2032 season, there is still time for viewership to stabilise as viewers get used to the new arrangement.
However, Nascar’s audience demographic also warrants attention. According to Ampere Analysis, 31 per cent of the sport’s US fanbase is aged between 55 and 64. Prime Video’s streaming audiences skewed nearly seven years younger than linear viewers – though a median age of 56.1 still underlines the work ahead in attracting younger fans to the sport.
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