CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR Chairman Jim France gave more forceful testimony Wednesday as the final witness called by Michael Jordan’s side in a federal antitrust lawsuit against the stock car racing series, explaining that advice from his late parents helped shape his stance against granting the team a permanent franchise under a new revenue-sharing model.
NASCAR attorney Christopher Yates began the eighth day of the trial by asking the soft-spoken France, 81, whether he wears hearing aids.
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NASCAR is the largest motorsports series in the United States. It was founded in 1948 by Bill France Sr. and is still privately owned by the France family based in Florida. Jim France said he grew up following two core principles passed down from his parents.
His mother, credited with helping her husband build NASCAR from the ground up, told her two sons to always pay the bills. Bill France Sr. advised them to “walk the talk.”
It is these two principles that led France to refuse to make concessions on permanent concessions in the 2025 revenue-sharing agreement.
“I’ve seen so much change over the years, and things are changing so quickly, I don’t know how to put something in place – I don’t know how we can get to a permanent agreement,” he testified.
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He later directly related this to his parents’ advice.
“I had no vision for the future and I felt uncomfortable making promises that I couldn’t always keep,” he testified.
That thinking is consistent with Tuesday’s testimony from NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps, who late Friday afternoon presented NASCAR’s confusing version of the Sept. 6, 2024 final agreement to teams, and by the end of the day signed the 112-page document or would abandon its charter.
Phelps confirmed that the delay in sending the final draft was because France promised Roger Penske, owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, IndyCar and multiple series including NASCAR, that France would speak with Penske personally before the agreement was delivered. France tried to call Penske multiple times that day, and Phelps testified that Penske didn’t answer.
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It wasn’t until the two finally spoke that the charter was sent to the teams around 5 p.m., with a midnight deadline.
“Jim was a man of his word,” Phelps testified.
23XI Racing, owned by Basketball Hall of Famer Jordan, three-time Daytona 500 champion Denny Hamlin and Jordan’s financial adviser Curtis Polk, and Front Row Motorsports, owned by Bob Jenkins, were the only two teams among the 15 organizations to refuse to sign. They filed a lawsuit instead.
Multiple team owners described the opening weekend of the 2024 playoffs as an ultimatum from NASCAR, as they found the offers to be “take it or leave it” and signed them with “a gun to our heads.” Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress testified Tuesday that his team would have folded had he not signed the agreement.
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France’s performance on the witness stand was better on Wednesday than it had been the day before, as plaintiffs’ attorney Jeffrey Kessler had to repeat many questions and France said on many topics that he either couldn’t recall, didn’t remember, or wasn’t sure – even when responding to evidence that the France Family Trust received $400 million in distributions between 2021 and 2024, valuing NASCAR at $5 billion.
He’s not sure what title his niece, Lesa France Kennedy, holds in NASCAR, or what percentage of ownership there is between the two. Evidence shows that Jim France owns 54% of NASCAR and Vice Chairman France Kennedy owns 36%. France also testified that he believed his compensation as chairman was “in the range of $3.5 million.”
While the extension offer in September 2024 did increase the annual revenue promised to the team, it was still less than the $720 million the team was asking for — an amount that Phelps testified would bankrupt NASCAR.
It also falls short of the four “pillars” required by the team. The team ended up adding $431 million in annual revenue but was not granted a perpetual license and had no say in governance or the terms they sought in new business streams.
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France testified Wednesday that he did believe the teams received some of their requests.
He was the last witness called as the accusers rested and NASCAR began its defense. NASCAR called out an executive who confirmed the cost of the current race cars; its chief financial officer who claimed NASCAR didn’t have the funds to pay teams the amounts they asked for in their charter agreements; and finally a prominent accountant.
There is evidence that Nascar’s top team owners have written personal letters pleading with France to make the renewable franchise permanent. The plaintiffs also introduced several documents detailing communications between NASCAR executives that showed France’s stubborn opposition to a permanent franchise during more than two years of intense negotiations.
Despite requests from Hall of Fame owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Penske, France’s position never changed. France said on the witness stand that the four men were close personal friends.
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The franchise system is equivalent to the franchise model used in other sports. In NASCAR, charters guarantee a car a spot in a 40-car field each week and have specified financial terms.
The nine-person jury will have to decide whether NASCAR violated antitrust laws and, if so, how much harm 23XI and Front Row suffered. An economist previously testified that NASCAR owes 23XI and Front Row $364.7 million in damages and that NASCAR shorted 36 franchise teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.
Mark E. Zmijewski, a professor at the University of Chicago Business School, testified Wednesday to explain why he believed the economist’s calculations were wrong. He did not put a number on the potential losses NASCAR could cause, but instead testified that he found the prediction was incorrect because the model used Formula One racing as a baseline.
Zmijewski said F1 has higher growth rates and is more profitable than NASCAR, which is not profitable enough to cover the estimated payments economists say is owed to all racing teams.
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NASCAR expects to wrap up the case on Friday.
If NASCAR loses, it will be up to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell to break up the monopoly, and he can make any decision he chooses. Among the options are forcing the French family to sell NASCAR or the tracks they own, or even dismantling or changing the charter system.
Victory for 23XI and Front Row does not guarantee that the two teams will receive a total of six charters from NASCAR. They all said if they weren’t a franchise team, they would go out of business.
