NASCAR's Majority Owners Explore Sale

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Liana B. Baker, Jessica Toonkel, Greg Roumeliotis

(Reuters) - The majority owners of NASCAR, the company which operates the namesake U.S. car-racing series and other motorsport events, are exploring options that include the sale of a majority stake, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The move comes as NASCAR grapples with an aging fan base, stricter safety rules and a competitive media landscape that have weighed on its popularity and made it less attractive to advertisers and sponsors.

The France family, which controls NASCAR, is working with investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) to identify a potential deal for the company, three sources said, cautioning that the deliberations are at exploratory stage and no agreement of any kind is certain.

The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential.

NASCAR and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

NASCAR could attract interest from media companies and private equity firms, according to the sources. The company’s exact valuation could not be established, though the sources said it could be worth several billions of dollars.

The company was founded by Bill France Sr. in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1948. Drivers in its races, such as Dale Earnhardt Sr, became household names, and major companies rushed to have their brands affiliated with NASCAR.

But as its loyal fans grew older, younger consumers showed less enthusiasm for the sport, driving TV ratings down. There is still, however, a lot of competition between broadcasters, technology companies and cable operators for live sports rights, as advertisers seek events that viewers want to watch real-time.

“In a time period that is attractive for live event and live entertainment, Nascar has struggled,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG. “There is absolutely a desire to own rather than license content but everything has a price.”

NASCAR has been dabbling in so-called e-sports in a bid to reach younger audiences. Earlier this year, 704Games, NASCAR’s exclusive video game licensee, said it would bring NASCAR Heat Champions to Daytona International Speedway during the Daytona 500 weekend.

As a privately held company, NASCAR does not disclose earnings. However, International Speedway Corp (ISCA.O), which hosts the Daytona 500 rally and owns 12 of the 23 NASCAR Cup Series tracks, reported a 1.6 percent year-on-year drop in admissions revenue in its fiscal 2017, blaming it “substantially” on NASCAR events.

In 2017, Liberty Media Corp (FWONA.O) spent more than $8 billion, including debt, to acquire international motor sports league Formula 1, ending a long-running saga surrounding the sport’s ownership and potential flotation. The new owners have shaken up its management, and put a sharper focus on new media markets and boosted its presence in North America.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-star ... SKBN1I80CG

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Posted on May 7, 2018 by Jeff Gluck

What happened: According to a report by the Reuters wire service, the France family is exploring a sale of NASCAR. Reuters said investment bank Goldman Sachs is working with NASCAR to find a potential buyer. NASCAR declined comment when I asked about this story and I have not been able to confirm it independently — but Reuters is a highly respected outlet and there’s no reason to believe this is a false report.

What it means: This is the first development in what could ultimately become one of the most important stories in NASCAR history. That the founding France family is even considering selling the sport and cashing out is a massive development that could have significant repercussions. And if the sale actually happens? NASCAR as we know it is likely to change forever, perhaps undergoing a transformation that could be similar to Formula One’s makeover. F1 was sold two years ago for $4.4 billion to Liberty Media.

News value (scale of 1-10): Like an earthquake too large to be accurately measured by a seismograph, this one is off the charts. Depending on what happens and who buys it and what their intentions are, this could turn out to be the biggest NASCAR story ever.

Three questions: With the potential of a sale now becoming public, what kind of immediate impact could this have on the sport? What entity has both the interest and billion dollars (at least) it would take to purchase and run the most popular form of racing in America? Would a new owner be able to save NASCAR from its decade-long slump, or would such a change only accelerate the decline?

http://jeffgluck.com/france-family-repo ... scar-sale/

[alenigma]

I wonder if Monster could buy Nascar? Nascar just bought ARCA. They would also be buying IMSA.
There are more questions than answers. Why did Nascar buy ARCA just last week to put itself on the block a week later?

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No one ever accused BZF of being a smart businessman.

[Annalee]

He's been looking to get rid of NASCAR since it was made public that he wanted to buy the Carolina Panthers....He is definitely not his father or grandfather..I just don't know who would want to buy.... .And thank goodness the Panthers already has another buyer....

[alenigma]

RJR Nabisco, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Monster, some tele-com with billions? How about Elon Musk? Richard Branson?

[alenigma]

Alan Gates,E-bay,Amazon, Paul McCartney??

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Kevin Harvick: A NASCAR sale could mean downsizing, schedule changes and better revenue sharing

By Nate Ryan | May 9, 2018, 8:45 AM EDT

The report of a potential sale involving NASCAR had Kevin Harvick mulling many possibilities during his weekly show on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

The 2014 champion, who leads the Cup Series with four victories this season, said an ownership change also could mean some significant realignment of its bases, too.

“If I was looking at NASCAR and said, ‘All right, I want to own this business and what would I do to it?’, I think the first thing is there might be a possibility for some downsizing and efficiency that could be put into place to save some overhead and really kind of refine everything and hone in on certain things so that you can make those things great,” Harvick said Tuesday night on his “Happy Hours” program.

“And the reason I say that is there’s an office in California, New York, Daytona and Charlotte. There’s an R&D center in Charlotte. So where is the home, and do you need all that? Is it necessary to have people most of us don’t know in California and New York, and maybe it is. Someone might have to explain it to me. But if you can have one central location to say, ‘This is where NASCAR is.’ ”

Harvick, who owns a management company that has clients across multiple sports, has been pushing for NASCAR to shake up its schedule by adding more connections to grass-roots short tracks and rotating the championship finale and All-Star Race.

He said a sale of NASCAR might help with such an overhaul.

“Bringing a new owner in may draw that line clearer to say now there’s separation between NASCAR and racetracks, and I think it might be a possibility to open the schedule up and go to some new places,” he said. “Because of the fact you have two publicly traded companies that are trying to make a bottom line and trying to make their investors happy with the investing in the racetracks.”

Would a sale of NASCAR include bundling those publicly traded companies, International Speedway Corp. and Speedway Motorsports Inc., that own 20 of the 23 tracks that play host to the Cup Series?

“You know that’s a good question,” Harvick said. “And look, there’s a lot of people that are way smarter than me and that’s the hard part about speculating on stuff like this is what comes with it? How far does it go? Does it come with some of their racetrack ownership? Is it something to a private equity group that comes in and buys it and does like they did with F1 and looks to just kind of change the way it’s marketed and change the way that it’s structured?”

Harvick also believes there could be the chance to provide more financial security for teams.

“I think that would be a viable opportunity here, just from the things that we do,” he said. “Is it somebody that comes in and says, ‘OK, we’re going to structure it like an actual league where everybody’s kind of sharing in the TV revenue more evenly and to help the teams get where they need to be from a TV revenue standpoint so that they’re not so dependent on sponsors.’ So that these team owners can have real franchises that are worth value that other people want to come in to buy.

“So I think there’s some real opportunities that you could talk about, but we just don’t know the 100% structure (of a possible sale).”

https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2018/05/09 ... e-sharing/

[Annalee]

This is the problem in a nutshell.......

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Boy, ain't that the truth.