23XI, Front Row dismiss request seeking financial information from F1 in lawsuit against NASCAR

Last month, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports asked a federal district court in Colorado to compel Liberty Media — owners of Formula One, to turn over sensitive financial information as an aid in its antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR. Wednesday, 23XI and Front Row dismissed court proceedings in trying to compel compliance with their subpoena for F1 financial info, per Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports.

Pockrass said that the teams either settled and got some information or dropped the quest entirely. The teams also requested similar information from the NFL, NHL, NBA and IndyCar. Filed March 31 in a New York district court, those cases will continue. F1 “refused to produce the requested information.”

“NASCAR has exploited its monopoly power to impose anticompetitive terms on the teams that compete in Cup Series races, including by providing teams with lower shares of revenues [such as TV revenues from NASCAR’s $7.7 billion media rights deal] than they would receive in a competitive market,” the teams said in their initial filing. “… Plaintiffs’ subpoenas to the leagues seek financial information relevant to proving antitrust injury and calculating the damages incurred by Plaintiffs under the well-accepted ‘yardstick’ measure of estimating damages in an antitrust litigation.”

23XI, Front Row continue on in legal battle against NASCAR

23XI and Front Row filed an antitrust lawsuit this past October, accusing NASCAR and its CEO Jim France of “unlawful monopolization of premier stock car racing in order to enrich themselves at the expense of the premier stock car racing teams.” The antitrust lawsuit stemmed from 23XI and Front Row opting not to sign NASCAR’s final charter proposal last September at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Teams negotiated an extension of the original 2016 charter agreement for two years ahead of its Dec. 31 expiration. They made demands such as making charters permanent, which NASCAR refused to include in its proposals.

The final proposal came in at 6 p.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 6. NASCAR allegedly gave teams a six-hour deadline to sign, threatening to “eliminate the charter system altogether for 2025 and beyond” if they did not. 23XI and Front Row were the two holdouts among the 15 Cup Series teams. The final offer included a nearly 50 percent increase that teams earned from NASCAR’s record $1.1 billion per year television deal that went into effect in 2025 and also runs through 2031.

The jury trial for the joint lawsuit filed by 23XI and Front Row against NASCAR and France is set for Dec. 1. Both teams secured a preliminary injunction to continue racing while the lawsuit is pending.