NASCAR’s appeal to eliminate charters for two Cup Series teams is ‘meritless,’ teams say
Earlier this month, NASCAR argued that the two Cup Series teams that are suing NASCAR shouldn’t be able to compete in the series under 2025 charter terms.
In response?
Those two teams called that argument “narrow” and “meritless.”
On Friday, Front Row Motorsports and the Michael Jordan-owned 23XI Racing filed their response to NASCAR’s appeal of the December injunction which ruled that NASCAR needed to allow FRM and 23XI compete as chartered teams in 2025. NASCAR’s appeal — which was filed the week of the Daytona 500 — claims that the injunction orders “flout federal antitrust law,” “misapply the established rules governing the use of preliminary injunctions” and “have sweeping implications for NASCAR’s 2025 Cup Series season,” among other claims.
The teams, in response Friday, said that NASCAR used “overblown rhetoric and hyperbole” to attack the district court’s reasoning for granting the injunction — for letting them race with a charter, in other words.
“They assert that the judge did not understand antitrust law and abused his discretion,” the teams say in the filing. “But the ‘errors’ defendants identify are not errors at all.
“The district court applied well-established precedent to the extensive fact and expert record, properly exercising its discretion to grant a narrowly tailored preliminary injunction that protects the rights of all parties and the public until trial.
“Each of the defendants’ arguments against this narrow injunction is meritless.”
This is the latest development in a saga that began in September, after 13 of the 15 NASCAR Cup Series teams agreed to the new charter deal that NASCAR presented to them.
The charter deal was updated from the original charter deal brokered in 2016 — which it made it so each race team operated like franchises in other pro sports leagues: NASCAR’s charter system guaranteed that Cup teams with charters had guaranteed entry into each race and that they’d earn a portion of each race’s purse. Such a system, in theory, was a rising tide that lifted all boats.
The updated deal offered some concessions to teams. Among the most prominent: Charter holders receive 49% of broadcast revenue under the new media rights agreement, a bump of 25% from 2016, court documents show. Still, it wasn’t reportedly precisely what Cup teams wanted — for instance, it did not make Cup charters permanent — and that led to Front Row Motorsports and 23XI opting to not sign the agreement.
Then, a month later, FRM and 23XI sued NASCAR on the grounds that it is a monopoly, an argument it rehashed in Friday’s filings. They also later filed an injunction seeking to compete as charter members under the 2025 charter agreement, claiming that they needed to do so without forcing them to “face an irreparable business collapse” as litigation ensued.
NASCAR has since appealed that injunction, claiming that the injunction transforms the case from a legal battle into a business negotiation, among other things. NASCAR has also since filed counterclaims to the lawsuit and made clear that no settlement is coming.
The appeals hearing — to determine if FRM and 23XI can continue racing under the current charter agreement — will take place in the Fourth District of Appeals and is scheduled for May 9.
A jury trial for the lawsuit, which will also consider the counterclaims, is set for Dec. 1.
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 2:54 PM with the headline "NASCAR’s appeal to eliminate charters for two Cup Series teams is ‘meritless,’ teams say."
