NASCAR has announced who will be eligible and how the voting will be conducted for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is scheduled to have its first induction ceremony in May 2010, but no decision has been made yet on the awarding of television broadcasting rights.
As part of its contract with the City of Charlotte, which will own and operate the hall of fame, NASCAR owns all broadcast rights for the event.
NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said the induction ceremony is not packaged in the current television deal and the negotiation process on the rights is just beginning.
Fox, Speed, TNT and ABC/ESPN are the current NASCAR television partners as part of a racing contract that currently runs through 2014, an eight-year deal worth a total of $4.48 billion.
Obviously, Speed, which is owned by Fox, would love to have that hall induction ceremony programming.
“Speed is totally fired up about working on programming covering the inaugural NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony,” said Speed President Hunter Nickell. “In fact, the brainstorming has long been under way, and we are in the process of developing a specific approach to this historical event.”
An ESPN spokesman said the network also would be interested in the induction ceremony. And TNT, whose parent company Turner owns NASCAR.com, also could play a role in the negotiations.
“If we are able to find a financial model that makes sense for Turner, either on television or online, we would … certainly discuss it with our longtime partners at NASCAR,” said Turner Sports President David Levy.
Determining the value of the rights may be tricky. According to the 2007 Dover Motorsports annual report, Cup live broadcast revenue for that year was $473.44 million – about $12.46 million per event (although a sliding scale, depending on the market, actually determines how much a specific race is worth). Nationwide broadcasts were worth $29.01 million ($829,643 per race), and Truck events were worth $2.53 million ($101,000 per race).
While probably not as valuable as a race telecast, the induction ceremony likely is worth more than a practice or qualifying show, said Mark Lazarus, the former president for Turner Entertainment Group who also was a leader of Atlanta’s bid to get the hall of fame.
Lazarus, now the president for media and marketing for sports agency/media production company Career Sports & Entertainment, said there are also huge sponsorship opportunities and potential television advertising revenue that could go along with the hall of fame and the inductions.
“The rights are valuable,” Lazarus said. “You’re talking about the history of the sport. You’re talking about multiple events because there are the nominations, who gets picked to be in the hall, and then there’s the hall of fame ceremony.”
When asked if the rights could be worth thousands or millions of dollars, Lazarus said: “It all depends on what the networks envision they can do with programming. … It’s a special event, and it should be valued as a special event.”
Lazarus said he would expect that NASCAR would roll the event into the overall TV negotiations, much the way the season-ending banquet is part of the current contracts.