CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Two NASCAR teams — one of them owned by Michael Jordan — filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the stock car series and chairman Jim France on Wednesday, claiming the new charter system limits competition by unfairly binding teams to the series, its tracks and its suppliers.
23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports filed suit in the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte after two years of contentious negotiations between the privately owned National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing and the 15 charter-holding organizations in the Cup Series, NASCAR’s top-tier circuit.
“The France family and NASCAR are monopolistic bullies,” the teams said in the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “And bullies will continue to impose their will to hurt others until their targets stand up and refuse to be victims. That moment has now arrived.”
NASCAR in early September presented its final offer on what is essentially a revenue sharing model; 13 organizations signed, with most saying they did so under duress or felt threatened into doing so.
But 23XI Racing, the team co-owned by Jordan and veteran driver Denny Hamlin of Joe Gibbs Racing, and the smaller Front Row team refused to sign. They hired Jeffrey Kessler, a top antitrust attorney who has represented the players in all four major professional North American sports, helped push the NCAA toward an era of paid college athletes and won a landmark equal pay settlement for members of the U.S. national women’s soccer team.