Roger Penske touts NASCAR’s reported $7.7 billion media rights deals: “A great move”

Roger Penske touted NASCAR’s historic media rights deals in a press conference on Thursday morning.

NASCAR announced new deals with NBC, Fox, Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday, which will see some Cup Series races air exclusively on streaming platforms for the first time starting in 2025. Penske, the owner of champion Ryan Blaney’s team, spoke highly of the seven-year deals that will reportedly generate $7.7 billion.

“Believe me: If NBC and Fox and the other partners didn’t believe there was value in what they put together, NASCAR wouldn’t have gotten $7.7 billion,” Penske said in a press conference inside the Music City Center. “I have to go along with the experts on that. To me, it’s a great move.”

The 86-year-old owner has won the past two Cup Series championships (Team Penske’s Joey Logano won the 2022 title), which marks the first time Penske Racing has won back-to-back Cup titles.

Ryan Blaney: From approaching to Roger Penske to representing NASCAR as its champion

Blaney remembers walking onto a Team Penske bus with his father in 2012.

They approached Roger Penske, as a 19-year-old Blaney was looking for his first full-time opportunity. He’d also been visiting other Cup Series teams, including JR Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing.

Penske had respect for Blaney’s father, Dave — a retired driver — and then-Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski had gotten to know a young Blaney. They saw potential, and Blaney joined the team.

“A lot of people fortunately speaking fairly good about me — not that I deserved it back then — but however they convinced him to give me a shot is pretty spectacular,” Blaney told reporters. “And not only giving me a shot in 2012, but sticking with me for 10 years.”

Now that Blaney is a champion, the 29-year-old mentioned how he wants to use his platforms and seek out opportunities to promote the sport, especially during this off-season. He brought up the new media rights deals and encouraged NASCAR’s efforts to connect with a new generation of younger fans.

“We just finished a massive TV deal going forward in the future,” Blaney said. “I want the sport to do well, because I want to be a part of the sport for a long time. You don’t want to be a part of a sport that’s in a rut. I think they’ve done a great job of getting where we need to be that I think it’s positive for the future.”

In addition to Blaney delivering Roger Penske’s team its first back-to-back Cup championship, Will Power also won last year’s IndyCar title for Team Penske. That was the first time Penske won a NASCAR and IndyCar title in the same season.

Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing have long been known as heavyweights. Even with the parity of today’s racing that produced the youngest Championship Four in history, Blaney was the only one of those four finalists not from those two teams.

“You think about the teams that Roger is competing against,” Logano told reporters. “A lot of them, they have a lot of money to spend; They can match us on that. They’ve been doing it for a long time, we’ve been doing it a long time, a lot of them can match us on that. But it’s just the people and culture that’s in our building. We’re supposed to win, and when you don’t, it feels like a huge burden, huge failure.”

From motocross aspirations to NASCAR’s Rookie of the Year

Ty Gibbs said he grew up around his family’s motocross team.

It wasn’t until he was about 15 years old that he started caring about NASCAR, when he began racing dirt carts at Millbridge Speedway in Salisbury, along with taking a trip to watch Matt Kenseth win the 2013 Southern 500.

“I was just here two years ago for ARCA championships,” Gibbs, 21, told reporters. “It’s definitely gone by really fast. It’s been really special. I’m trying to enjoy the ride as much as I can.”

Gibbs, grandson of Joe, is NASCAR’s Rookie of the Year after posting 10 top-10 finishes in his first full-time season in the Cup Series. He moved to the Cup level after earning seven victories in a dominant Xfinity Series championship run last year.

“Ty has done an amazing job,” said teammate Christopher Bell, the only Joe Gibbs Racing driver who reached the Championship 4 this year. “Coming into his rookie year, obviously winning Rookie of the Year was cool, something I didn’t even get to do. That was a good feather in his cap.

“Just his consistency that came at the end of the season. He became a guy. A guy that you talked about on the radio, that you were paying attention to what he was doing and how his car was driving. He came a long way from the Daytona 500 to the championship race. While the 20 team hasn’t reached their ceiling, neither has the 54 yet, either.”