CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR sued Michael Jordan’s race team and Jordan’s longtime business partner on Wednesday, accusing both of being part of an illegal scheme to extract better terms from NASCAR during negotiations.
As part of the federal lawsuit filed by Jordan’s 23XI Racing and another team, Front Row Motorsports, NASCAR has now brought a counterclaim against the teams and Curtis Polk — a 23XI co-owner who has advised Jordan for decades.
Led by Polk, the suit alleges, the teams “agreed to a scheme to pressure NASCAR to accept their collusive terms, including by engaging in media campaigns, interfering with NASCAR’s broadcast agreement negotiations, threatening boycotts of NASCAR events and engaging in a group boycott of a NASCAR Team Owner Council Meeting.”
NASCAR in the suit called the teams “an illegal cartel.” Polk, it said, headed the scheme by “representing all teams in negotiations, coordinating their conduct, and threatening teams that considered leaving the conspiracy and interfering and negatively affecting NASCAR’s attempts to renew its media rights agreements.”
A request for comment from Polk and the race teams was not immediately returned.
23XI and Front Row, owned by restaurant entrepreneur Bob Jenkins, filed a federal lawsuit Oct. 2 against NASCAR and its CEO Jim France, son of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., alleging the use of “anticompetitive and exclusionary practices” to “enrich themselves at the expense of the premier stock car racing teams.”
The dispute between the parties emanates from contentious negotiations across two-plus years between NASCAR and 15 teams over the extension of NASCAR’s so-called “charter system” — the sport’s version of franchises that assures the holder of a charter certain financial guarantees in addition to a starting position in all 36 races in NASCAR’s premier Cup Series — that was set to expire on Dec. 31, 2024.
NASCAR is asking the court for triple damages as well as to eliminate the guaranteed starting positions into Cup Series races “if Counterclaim Defendants persist in seeking to have the Charter Agreements declared as unlawful under the antitrust laws.”
Last September, just days before the start of the Cup Series playoffs, NASCAR made what it deemed its final offer to extend the charter agreement through 2031. This offer included an increase to nearly 50 percent that teams earned from NASCAR’s record $1.1 billion per year television deal that went into effect in 2025 and also runs through 2031.
According to court documents, NASCAR is alleged to have told the teams that should they not sign the extension by a midnight deadline, the charter system would effectively be disbanded at the end of the year. Thirteen of 15 teams then signed the extension, with 23XI and Front Row the holdouts. Among the issues of contention, teams had sought permanent charters — something NASCAR resisted.
The following month 23XI and Front Row filed its joint lawsuit, setting off a legal saga that has included multiple appearances in federal court and a continued exchange of back-and-forth barbs.
Throughout the proceedings, NASCAR attorney Chris Yates has stated numerous times that the Race Team Alliance (RTA) — consisting of the 15 teams that own charters and functions as a collective bargaining consortium — behaved like a “cartel” in initially forming the RTA, then how they conducted themselves during charter negotiations.
From the RTA, a subset group called the “Team Negotiation Committee” (TNC) was formed to negotiate with NASCAR on behalf of all the charter teams. The TNC consisted of Polk, Joe Gibbs Racing president Dave Alpern, RFK Racing president Steve Newmark, and Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon.
But NASCAR chose not to name any of the other race teams as defendants in its countersuit, with the focus on 23XI and Front Row – along with Polk’s role as the “orchestrator” of a potential boycott (which never came to fruition).
As the legal proceedings have unfolded off the track, both 23XI and Front Row have remained active competitors in NASCAR. Each team even expanded over the offseason, acquiring third charters and now field three full-time teams after a federal judge ruled in December that both teams could race as charter teams for the 2025 season. (NASCAR is appealing that decision before the U.S. Court of Appeals with a hearing likely occurring in mid-May.)
A Dec. 1 date for a jury trial has been set for the joint lawsuit filed by 23XI and Front Row against NASCAR and France.
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(Photo: James Gilbert / Getty Images
