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Michael Jordan is taking NASCAR to court.
The NBA legend’s 23XI Racing and restaurant entrepreneur Bob Jenkins’s Front Row Motorsports have filed a joint antitrust lawsuit against the family-run stock-car racing league.
NASCAR is unique among U.S. sports in that it’s owned and operated by the France family, including current CEO Jim France, who is a defendant in the lawsuit.
The two teams suing NASCAR say it uses its monopoly power to hoard revenue and push teams around in negotiations.
“The France family and NASCAR are monopolistic bullies,” the teams said in the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by Front Office Sports. “And bullies will continue to impose their will to hurt others until their targets stand up and refuse to be victims. That moment has now arrived.”
The suit alleges the league’s charter system curbs competition by binding teams to its series, racetracks, and suppliers. (The Frances own many of the tracks the series competes at, including Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.)
The lawsuit comes after two years of intense revenue-sharing negotiations between NASCAR and the 15 teams it charters to race in its Cup Series, the top league. When 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick clinched the team’s first NASCAR’s regular-season title last month, a league executive was absent during the trophy presentation, leaving some to wonder whether it was personal over co-owner Denny Hamlin’s outspokenness on the negotiations.
The suit claims NASCAR pressured the teams to agree to the charter deals in September of this year. It describes a “take-it-or-leave-it offer” from NASCAR, with teams privately saying they were “coerced” and had a “gun to our head” while signing.
Jordan and Hamlin refused to follow their peers’ lead. Their lawsuit requests details from France and NASCAR “related to their exclusionary practices and intent to insulate themselves from any competition.”
NASCAR introduced the charter system in 2016, which guaranteed 36 entries in every major Cup series race and included revenue sharing. Of the 19 team owners originally granted charters in 2016, the lawsuit says only eight remain in NASCAR. The lawsuit says the league’s model comes without a path for owner profitability.
The charter system originally ran from 2016 to 2020, with deals getting automatically renewed through the end of 2024. With the current deal expiring, teams wanted a bigger slice of profits, a role in governance and rule-setting and part of the revenue made off deals involving the league’s biggest stars.
France has resisted, including a request from teams that the charters be made permanent. The lawsuit says the CEO’s family “has long been determined to protect its monopoly from having to compete with any other racing organization.” The lawsuit details the long history of the France family’s domination of NASCAR, including France’s father calling his reign a “dictatorship” in the 1970s.
“Everyone knows that I have always been a fierce competitor, and that will to win is what drives me and the entire 23XI team each and every week out on the track,” Jordan said in a joint statement with FRM. “I love the sport of racing and the passion of our fans, but the way NASCAR is run today is unfair to teams, drivers, sponsors, and fans. Today’s action shows I’m willing to fight for a competitive market where everyone wins.”
The lawsuit argues NASCAR is violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by preventing teams from racing on its circuit “without accepting the anticompetitive terms.”
The racing owners have retained Jeffrey Kessler, a heavyweight attorney in sports antitrust law. Kessler has been at the center of scores of landmark sports cases, including representing the U.S. women’s soccer players in their equal pay lawsuit and college athletes in the Alston v. NCAA case he won at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kessler plans to ask for a preliminary injunction that allows both racing companies to compete in the 2025 season without charter agreements while the case proceeds through court.
“Every major sport goes through a moment when it needs to be transformed—when the people who are being treated unfairly stand up and say it’s time for change,” Kessler said in a statement to FOS. “This is NASCAR’s moment, and that change is what we want from this case.”
—A.J. Perez contributing reporting.
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