NASCAR President Steve Phelps Suggests a Twofold Approach to Please Teams and Networks in Next TV Deal

For quite some time now, there has been a collective curiosity surrounding the next TV deal for NASCAR. The deadline is right around the corner, current broadcasters haven’t been cutting it, and teams have raised their voice when it comes to getting a bigger piece of the cake.

The stage is set.

In a recent interview, NASCAR President Steve Phelps cleared his stance over the revenue side of things, describing it as something that will be dealt with differently on an internal and external level.

“We’re not going to negotiate in the media — it doesn’t make sense to — but behind closed doors, we are going to do what we believe is fair and put forth what we believe is a fair relationship with our teams,”  Phelps said according to journalist Adam Stern.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr had criticized NASCAR for bowing down to TV and broadcasters

Earlier this year, in an episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Dale Earnhardt Jr. put his thoughts on the table about the way race broadcasting is done once the race is over, how “everyone is scrambling” to get off the air once the race ends.

For some context, Earnhardt Jr spoke against the lack of good interviews and the lack of post-race interviews on TV in general.

“The reason why we do the interview on the front straightway is because TV is in a hurry to get off the air,” Dale Jr. said. “The more races that we push on big networks instead of NBC Sports Network or FOX Sports 1, when it’s on the big network like FOX or NBC, they are in a massive hurry to get off the air and get the next programming back on.”

“NASCAR is not important to them. And so they’re screaming, going, ‘When is this coming off the air?”

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