NASCAR signed a $7.7 billion media rights deal, courtesy of former president of NASCAR Steve Phelps and ex-CEO Jim France. Seven years, six platforms, $1.1 billion a year. The sport’s leadership called it a landmark moment. Jeremy Mayfield and Darrell Andrews watched the same announcement and came away with a very different feeling.
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“I just feel like it’s on a sinking ship that nobody’s saying anything about filling holes up,” Mayfield said on FIVE WIDE Sports and Jeremy Mayfield Show.
Andrews did not flinch. “Everybody’s afraid to.”
These are not outsiders’ guesses. Mayfield ran Cup Series cars, the No. 12 Mobil 1 Ford for Roger Penske and the No. 19 Dodge for Ray Evernham. Andrews, on the other hand, gave nearly two decades hauling and wrenching for Junior Johnson. When they talk, they are speaking from inside the sport, not from a media desk. Their problem is not with the dollar amount. It is with what holds that number up.
“The viewership is not coming up any. It’s down,” Mayfield said. “How’s the TV deal gonna be able to say, okay, same with sponsors, we can still spend that seven billion dollars on what?”
Andrews kept it short. “I honestly don’t see how they do it.”
To land this deal, NASCAR handed its 38 Cup races to six different places. FOX and FS1 get 14. NBC and USA Network get 14 more. Amazon takes five. TNT and Max take five. Only nine of those 38 races are on over-the-air broadcast television. In that context, Mayfield put it plainly.
“You watch five over here and four over here and Amazon’s got five over here. It’s making it confusing.”
He is right about that, and it’s frustrating for the fans. Watching a full Cup season now means paying for cable or a live TV package, plus Amazon Prime, plus Max. That can easily exceed $100 a month before a single green flag drops. Casual fans are not doing that math and signing up. When races moved behind paywalls in year one, viewership dropped 12 to 15 percent compared to what those same races pulled on broadcast TV.
That number has far-reaching consequences in NASCAR. Sponsors do not pay for races. They pay for people watching races. Fewer people watching means sponsors start asking hard questions. When sponsors pull money, the teams built around that money start feeling it fast. Mayfield connected those dots directly.
“That’s gonna be the next thing that’s gonna be dropping. How’s the TV deal gonna be able to say we can still spend that seven billion on what?”
The TV concern is not a standalone. Mayfield and Andrews pulled it back to something more basic. The product on the track.
“Years ago, I don’t care what was happening the weekend of Bristol, it was packed,” Andrews said. “There wouldn’t be nobody at the Masters, they’d all be at Bristol.”
NASCAR’s Bristol Motor Speedway used to be the hardest ticket in the sport. 160,000 seats, regularly sold out, as fans drove from everywhere to watch drivers beat each other around a half-mile concrete bowl for 500 laps.
That track has been rebuilt with multiple lanes since. And NASCAR sprays chemicals on the surface to force grip that the racing itself stopped producing naturally.
“They go to Bristol and it’s not racing anymore,” Mayfield said. “Nobody’s there. Nobody’s there to see it.”
Empty seats and falling ratings run on the same track. Less demand from fans means less power at the next negotiating table. Mayfield sees where that leads. Andrews sees it too.