Nets Angle For Position To Broadcast Nascar

Basketball season is over. Baseball’s barely begun. And hockey may not come back at all. But fast cars are still packing them in on the nation’s racetracks—and TV sets. Now the real drama begins, as networks jockey for position in the race to win the rights to broadcast racing.

Nascar officials may have backed off a little on their initial demand— quietly asking earlier this year for a 50 percent fee increase from the television rights holders on the next rights package—but in the aftermath of record household ratings for the first half of the season on Fox, those officials expect to be appropriately rewarded by whichever network or combination of networks wins the next package, which will take effect at the start of the 2007 season.

Fox and NBC/Turner each currently pay Nascar $200 million per year under their six-year deals, which expire after the 2006 Nascar season, and the...