Months after NASCAR teams 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports filed a lawsuit against the sport and its chairman Jim France, the two teams have approached major sports leagues such as Formula One, the NBA, NFL, and NHL to make their case stronger.
23XI and Front Row have been trying to persuade the sports organizations to support them in the lawsuit by complying with a subpoena. The teams filed motions for compliance with subpoenas in Colorado – for F1 owner Liberty Media and in New York – for the NBA, NFL, and NHL.
The sports leagues have been asked to provide financial information, which the two NASCAR teams hope will highlight how the other major leagues are operating. This could include financial transactions between the leagues and their teams. For example, with F1, 23XI and Front Row could be seeking numbers on how the revenue is distributed among the ten teams and the conditions that govern the financial transactions with concerned parties.
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FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass reported the contents of the brief sent to the NBA, NFL, and NHL. He wrote:
“Plaintiffs seek four categories of information … showing team and league revenues and how those revenues are split between the league and its teams.
“That information will enable Plaintiffs to perform a yardstick comparison between the other major professional sports leagues (where competition is not precluded) and NASCAR (where exclusionary conduct has been used to unlawfully maintain a monopoly).”
Now, the NFL has already chosen to respond by rejecting the request to offer sensitive financial information. It stated that the subpoena is not based on a strong foundation and that the information sought is not connected to the dispute between the two teams and NASCAR. The response from the NFL stated:
“The Subpoena is based on the flimsiest of premises: that because Plaintiffs are suing NASCAR, they can obtain — by way of federal process — financials, financial projections, research, studies, analyses, and other highly confidential, proprietary, and commercially sensitive information belonging to almost every other major sports league in the United States.
“To be clear, there is no legitimate basis for any assertion that the information sought has any direct connection to the substantive dispute between the parties. … Put simply, not only does the Subpoena seek the NFL‘s most confidential information, it would put that information into the hands of some of the NFL‘s most consistent legal opponents and a participant in the broader sports and entertainment marketplace.”