Willis: NASCAR for sale? This time, the rumor just might be true

You’d hear the question occasionally, particularly following Bill France Jr.’s death 11 years ago: “You know anything about NASCAR being for sale?”

Nothing ever came of it, obviously. Until now, it seems.

You don’t arrange for Goldman Sachs to broker a possible sale of your billion-dollar business and expect that to remain a secret very long. When news agency Reuters, with its longtime connections in the international business world, reports that Goldman has been retained by NASCAR, you have to believe there’s something there.

But as of now, that and only that — “there’s something there” — is all we know.

We also know that the France family owns and operates NASCAR — as it has since those famous 1947 meetings in Daytona Beach — and won’t say anything publicly until a proper reaction, courtesy of highly trained media-message handlers, has been deemed worthy of public airing.

Best guess is something like this: “We have always concentrated on what’s best for NASCAR’s future and continue to do that.” It’s really the only answer available right now.

Oh, yeah, we also know this: Any sale of NASCAR would require a battalion of lawyers and a tremendous stack of paperwork. It would make Brexit look like a lemonade-stand transaction.

Complicated? That doesn’t even begin to describe what this would entail.

The mammoth issue would seemingly be the portfolio of speedways owned by International Speedway Corp., the publicly traded company whose upper management rungs are occupied by the same France family that also calls the shots for NASCAR.

That neat arrangement has always worked well for NASCAR and ISC. “It’s not a conflict of interests,” Bill France Jr. once told me, “it’s a combining of interests.”

ISC’s 12 tracks, including Daytona International Speedway, are hosts to a wide variety of racing action, but their biggest plums are the 19 Cup Series races that are part of NASCAR’s current 36-race schedule.

NASCAR (i.e. “the family”) wouldn’t sell NASCAR without some guarantee of ISC’s future role, nor would any buyer buy NASCAR without guarantees of continued ISC track availability. Unless I’m missing something.

It’s also no secret that the family has been diversifying through its ISC management. “One Daytona” — its growing and varied retail behemoth across the street from the Speedway — is the most visible current sign of that diversification. ISC’s half-stake in the Hollywood Casino at Kansas Speedway is another.

Once the immediate news is digested, the speculation will turn to the Who and Why. Who might possibly buy a sanctioning body? Why is NASCAR presumably for sale?

The Who: Best current guess is a mammoth media company looking for product, and among televised products, live sports events remain big.

How big?

Mass-media giant Liberty Media, which counts the Atlanta Braves and Sirius XM Radio among its holdings, bought Formula One two years ago.

As NASCAR’s previous network TV contracts (2007-14) were nearing an end and negotiations were ongoing with new suitors, NASCAR's TV ratings were in decline. But the new deal, with Fox and NBC, was reportedly for 30 percent more than the previous deal — $2.4 billion.

TV numbers are relative. Contract numbers like that are real money.

The Why: These are transformative times for NASCAR, and not all of it is in NASCAR’s control. Like some other sports-entertainment properties, its fan base is aging out, without enough replacement troops filling the ranks.

Also, within the garage walls, there’s more and more grumbling about the cost of racing and how that TV money is dispersed to teams. Yeah, economic gripes have been the norm since 1947 in NASCAR, but these days, there’s something called the Race Team Alliance, representing the team owners, as well as the Drivers Council.

“Organization” among the performers was never in the business model of Bill or Bill Jr.

Through all facets of business, third-generation stewardship has a long history of complications — sometimes self-inflicted, but often a matter of circumstances beyond control. You can debate where NASCAR’s current challenges fall.

But you can’t debate that a sale of NASCAR would be a major event. Not just within the world of auto racing, but right here in Daytona Beach, where that big glass-walled building on Speedway Boulevard stands as a modern symbol of what began here in simpler times.

What would a sale mean for many of those offices and the people inside them? And for the community at large?

No one can possibly know at this stage. But it'll be interesting. And oh so complicated.

Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

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