CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Nobody wanted a charter back in 2018, when Barney Visser wanted to sell the most valuable current franchise in NASCAR.
Visser had won the 2017 Cup Series title with Furniture Row Racing and Martin Truex Jr. A heart attack followed by bypass surgery kept Visser from the final two races of the year, when Furniture Row became the first single-car team since 1992 to win a championship. He was still too sick to travel in December that year to pick up the hardware.
So he decided to get out of the game.
Visser couldn’t find any takers for the charter he’d purchased from NASCAR under a new revenue model designed to give race teams something tangible for their participation, so he asked Spire Sports + Entertainment to help him find a buyer.
The motorpsports marketing agency found the market was dead.
Undeterred, Visser convinced Spire a charter one year removed from a championship would earn back its $6 million 2018 purchase value in two years of NASCAR payouts guaranteed for chartered teams. And that’s how Spire Motorsports got into the business of racing cars and collecting charters in a way that has kept the revenue flowing while creating significant value in the business of NASCAR.
Spire last weekend at Bristol was part of a convoluted deal in which it purchased the charter from Live Fast Motorsports on behalf of Trackhouse Racing. Under the deal, Spire will run Zane Smith in a third Cup car while Trackhouse works to expand to three full-time cars. Smith will eventually join Trackhouse, and that charter will likely follow him to to his new team.
It’s worth? The Athletic reported that Live Fast received $40 million in the transaction. Live Fast plans to scale down to a part-time team and run without a charter.
And Spire? Well, it will have an overhauled three-car lineup next season that includes recently extended Corey Lajoie. It also will certainly get some of that Trackhouse money; the team in one week signed the deal with Smith and a development deal with Shane van Gisbergen out of New Zealand.
There’s no doubt that Trackhouse is making bold moves, but none of it would be possible without Spire. When Trackhouse owner Justin Marks got into ownership, Spire leased the team its first charter. When Kaulig Racing moved from an Xfinity Series team to a Cup team, it bought a pair of charters from Spire.
Spire has single-handedly jumpstarted the charter market and driven up the value of the franchise tag.
“I think if you look down the list of organizations in the Cup Series, you’d be hard pressed to find any that are more transparent about their ambitions and intentions than these two organizations,” Spire President Bill Anthony said of Trackhouse and Spire.
He praised Spire owners Jeff Dickerson and TJ Puchyr for the deal with Trackhouse, which Anthony said is consistent with their ambitions.
“We’ve proven and come through in each of those circumstances; that is certainly a double-down on the future of the sport,” he said. “That’s not to say there isn’t work to be done with NASCAR and the charter agreement, but I think we believe in all the people in the garage and all the people in the NASCAR.”
The charter maneuvering comes as NASCAR and its teams are in a labor battle of sorts, with the latter calling for a better revenue model. A major ask remains the teams’ desire for charters to become permanent. The charters are currently renewable and revocable, and NASCAR seems unwilling to compromise on the issue.
Denny Hamlin three weeks ago said talks between the teams and NASCAR were terrible. The winner of Saturday’s race at Bristol is co-owner along with Michael Jordan of 23XI Racing but he directed all labor questions to NASCAR Chairman Jim France.
“I think the teams’ ask has been very legitimate and not off in left field,” Hamlin said. “You’re going to have to chase down Jim and ask for a reason because, there’s not really been a good reason, but the answer has been ‘No.”
