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NASCAR's SVP of Media & Production Brian Herbst feels that the new in-season tournament scheduled for 2025 could be a success, following the idealogy from the NBA.
A new in-season tournament, starting from the 2025 season, was recently announced with a $1 million prize for the winner. The tournament will take place within the Cup Series, in association with TNT and Prime Video who recently got into a media rights partnership with NASCAR. All the drivers will be eligible to take part in the three seeding races that will be streamed on Prime Video.
The main competition will take place over five rounds where the 32 drivers will battle head-to-head in a bracket-style tournament. This will be available to watch on TNT Sports. The ultimate winner will take home a prize of $1 million.
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This tournament could be an interesting fate and is inspired by the NBA, whom TNT is in partnership with, and the ideas of Denny Hamlin and Dirty Mo Media, as the former discussed on his Actions Detrimental podcast earlier in 2023. Brian Herbst revealed the same, talking on SiriusXM Radio.
"It was the concept of this in season tournament coming into the industry, kind of knowledge with Denny and Dirty Mo Media. There was TNT that was realizing early success with the NBA in season tournament. And we just really liked the idea. We liked the idea of this bracket style challenge." (1:30)
He further stated that the tournament would act as a "ramp up" for the Playoffs race.
"We thought it could be a race within a race concept. And we thought that this driver to driver kind of storyline piece would play really well during a part of the season that we're starting to ramp up to the race for the playoffs, but not quite there yet." (1:46)
NASCAR expects to increase engagement with in-season tournament
The NBA saw a positive change in their viewership with the introduction of their in-season tournament. Carrying this idea, TNT and NASCAR are hoping for the same.
Brian Herbst said in a press release:
"With the launch of our new media rights partnerships in 2025, we were excited to partner with Prime Video and TNT Sports to collaborate on fan engagement concepts that drive story lines in our sport and innovation from a production perspective."
"Having head-to-head driver matchups for each one of TNT’s NASCAR Cup Series races will add a compelling fan engagement element across media platforms like TNT, Bleacher Report, House of Highlights and NASCAR digital platforms."
TNT and Prime Video will divide the streaming of 10 races in the Cup Series. The media contract will last through the 2031 season. Since the calendar for the 2025 season has not been released yet, the races that the in-season tournament will be a part of are currently unknown.
