ISC and SMI sue each other over New Hampshire broadcast rights
Quote selected text Published April 8th, 2008 in NASCAR News
Speedway Motorsports Inc. and International Speedway Corp. are suing each other over the radio broadcast rights at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
ISC has had a long-standing contract with the track to broadcast the races on its Motor Racing Network. SMI, which bought the track in January, wants the races on its own Performance Racing Network.
The current contract awarding MRN the option to broadcast races at the track was signed in 2000 and required a three-year notice of termination. MRN agreed to give the track 25 percent of its advertising revenues from the events it broadcasts, and in the last seven years, MRN has paid the track more than $750,000, according to court documents.
According to court records, SMI claims the contract is not enforceable and that MRN didn’t exercise its option in time to broadcast the Nationwide-Cup weekend June 28-29 and the Cup race Sept. 14.
“MRN purportedly took the ‘exclusive’ right to broadcast all NASCAR events held at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway,” SMI Chairman Burton Smith wrote in a Feb. 7 letter to ISC that is part of the court file. “However, in this very same document, MRN left it open for itself to choose whether or not it would, in fact, broadcast any such events. As a result, there is no mutuality in the Agreement, and, the Agreement is … unenforceable and void.
“I cannot in good faith allow New Hampshire Motor Speedway or SMI to be subjected to this one-sided document which leaves them in limbo, subject to the whims of MRN.”
An ISC letter in response to Smith, written by NASCAR Chairman Brian France as part of his role as a member of the ISC board of directors, states:
“MRN has a three-year binding contract to produce those events, and it is impossible for them to simply walk away. Additionally, they have already started packaging and selling advertisements to these events.”
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Here is an idea. Take both crews, merge them together to create an All-Star radio broadcast crew, and have the race simulcast on both PRN & MRN affiliates (most affiliates are the same anyway)
Fisha695 wrote:
that would be to simple….everything has to be complicated
Fisha, don’t help these goofs. Let them figure it out for themselves. Wait, they already tried and failed. Not a bad idea Fisha. It would certainly be different than what we’ve had up ’til now.