A court hearing for the federal antitrust lawsuit among two racing teams and NASCAR had its share of fireworks on Thursday in Charlotte, with retired NBA Hall of Famer (and racing co-owner) Michael Jordan drawing attention in particular for his comments.
Jordan, a co-owner of 23XI Racing team who, along with Front Row Motorsports, declined signing a charter with NASCAR earlier this year and is instead now involved in a lawsuit against the organization, commented on the case following the Thursday hearing, during which some of his personal text messages were also revealed.
“Teams are going to regret not joining us,” Jordan wrote to business partner Curtis Polk in one text exchange, calling one team, JGR an expletive for not joining his team in rejecting the charter, and calling every team electing to sign their charters another expletive.
In another text exchange, about the expense of potentially acquiring a driver, Jordan wrote, “I have lost that in a casino. Let’s do it.”
Afterward, Jordan pointed to the airing of those messages as being an effort to paint his team as being overly profitable, when according to other teams’ financial records, 75 percent of teams were unprofitable.
“(Profitability is) not the point,” Jordan said. “The point is that the sport itself needs to change, for the fans, teams as well as for NASCAR, too. I feel like we made a good statement today about that.”
The two teams entered litigation late last year, arguing that the current charter doesn’t protect the teams well enough, crucially preventing them from filing future lawsuits.
Charters provide a guaranteed starting position in points races, and signers of the charter also receive a bigger piece of the race purse.
23XI and Front Row won an injunction to be able to continue to run as charter teams earlier this year, but NASCAR had that ruling overturned on appeal. NASCAR now wants to transfer their charters — three for each team — to new ownership. The current injunction brought by teams is aimed at preventing NASCAR from doing that, at least until the lawsuit gets resolved.
Jordan said, “If I have to fight this to the end, for the betterment of the sport, I will.”
