The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League have just one home game scheduled for the month of October. It’s October 13 against NFC South rival Atlanta Falcons at Bank of America Stadium. Meantime, 16.5 miles to the northeast Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts the Bank of America Roval 400. It’s an important cutoff race in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs that will shrink the playoff field from 12 drivers to eight after the race. Two major sporting events happening in the same city at the same time may not be unusual. There have been NFL regular season games played in the same city that is in the Major League Baseball playoffs. But when it comes to NASCAR races competing in the same market as a home game in the NFL, it is a frequent occurrence.
The Quaker State 400 was held at Atlanta Motor Speedway on September 8. The Atlanta Braves had a home game at Truist Field on the northern edge of Atlanta and the Atlanta Falcons kicked off their season at Mercedes Benz Stadium, all happening at the same time. The following week, IndyCar completed its regular season with the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, Tennessee. The race was originally set for the streets of downtown Nashville, including Nissan Stadium, the home of the Tennessee Titans. The NFL doesn’t release its schedule until the middle of May. Race promoter Scott Borchetta couldn’t afford to take that gamble. He made a pre-emptive strike by moving the race to the 1.33-mile superspeedway 35 minutes away. The NFL scheduled a Tennessee Titans home game against the New York Jets.
Then, there is this weekend’s schedule that has both the NFL and NASCAR in Charlotte, North Carolina at the same time. There is also a competitive conflict on Sunday, October 27 with the NASCAR race at Homestead-Miami Speedway and the NFL’s Miami Dolphins hosting a home game against the Arizona Cardinals at Hard Rock Stadium. The good news for that, however, is the one-hour distance between the two venues. The NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race is scheduled for November 10 at Phoenix Raceway, just down the road from the Arizona Cardinals hosting a home game against the New York Jets. Four of the 10 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff races will be held in markets where an NFL game will be contested at the same time.
“It’s a concern,” NASCAR President Steve Phelps told me on October 12 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “The NFL has a lot of variables they have to meet when they put together their schedule and so do we. The NFL is doing what they believe is in their best interest and NASCAR has to do what we believe is in our best interests. “The good news is we are already sold out at Phoenix for the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race in November, but it’s a concern at all of the other markets where there is a conflict.”Marcus Smith is the CEO of Speedway Motorsports, Inc., which owns and operates Charlotte Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Sonoma Raceway, Dover Motor Speedway, Nashville Superspeedway, North Wilkesboro Speedway and Kentucky Speedway.
I had a chance to talk to Smith about the difficulty of the date conflicts and either lack of awareness or cooperation from the NFL. The National Football League is without question one of the greatest sporting leagues on Earth and an entertainment powerhouse internationally with regular season games being played in Europe and South America in 2024. The closest thing to the NFL’s worldwide popularity is the World Premier League in European Football. NASCAR has a sizeable and very loyal following, but like all other sports in the United States, it is in the shadows of the NFL.
Smith will draw a sizeable crowd to Charlotte Motor Speedway for the Bank of America Roval 400, but the great conflict will be the corporate community that owns suites and entertains guests for both the Carolina Panthers and the NASCAR race. Also, an NFL home game will likely get much of the attention on local news and sports shows, even for a team playing as poorly as the Carolina Panthers. It also creates a higher demand on traffic control from local police and the North Carolina Highway Patrol to direct traffic in and out of two major sporting venues. “Never an ideal scenario, not just conflict for fan attendance and viewership, but also on infrastructure managing resources with traffic, etc.,” SMI Senior Vice President of Communications Scott Cooper told me. “Wish we didn’t have as many conflicts.”
It also divides up time devoted in the marketplace and forces loyal customers and fans of both to make a decision. “I tell you time is the No. 1 commodity that none of us can make more of,” Smith told me earlier this week. “We certainly want to win people’s choice when it comes to time. “Whether it’s football or amateur sports, a lot of parents and their kids are away for all sorts of amateur sports things, whether it’s dance, cheerleading, basketball, baseball, hockey, you name it, people are busy today. “Getting people to give you some of their time is huge thing and a big commitment to why we work so hard to make sure we show them a good time.”There are four Sundays in October. The NASCAR schedule is often a Rubik’s Cube of complication that is put together by the racing sanctioning body.
But the NFL schedule is probably much more complicated because of the number of teams and the number of games that have to fit perfectly into a schedule for its television partners. Smith, however, admits he finds it a bit odd that with just one Panthers home game in October, it had to be the same day as his NASCAR race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of interesting,” Smith said. “I don’t know why that is, but we’ll see. “Thankfully, we’ve got a great crowd for Sunday for the Bank of America Roval 400. I think it’s going to be a fun race, and the challenge that might be there for some, I think we’ve figured out how to handle all the logistics.”
Smith was pleased with the crowd that showed up at Nashville Superspeedway for the final race of the IndyCar season on September 15, but it wasn’t a capacity crowd. “I was impressed with the number of people that showed up, especially considering we went from the street race to the oval,” Smith said. “It’s not really so close to town that it’s convenient for people that might be in in Nashville, so I thought the crowd was tremendous that weekend and taking into account the forecast was terrible. “We had the worst forecast for 10 days out and I didn’t get there until Sunday morning and it was phenomenal. “I’m glad that we didn’t make a decision early on the weather.”
Smith credited Big Machine Music City Grand Prix promoter Scott Borchetta, the founder of Big Machine Label Group, for creating an environment that included entertainment in Nashville’s Broadway entertainment district with the race at Nashville Superspeedway. “Scott is fantastic,” Smith said. “I really am so impressed with Scott and everything he’s done in his business, his passion for racing and cars. “And he was a great partner, and I’m thrilled that he called us to help with that event.”Borchetta made the decision in February to move his race out of downtown Nashville to Nashville Superspeedway because he could not get any assurances from the NFL that would avoid a date conflict.
“The Titans have been great partners to the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix,” Borchetta told me. “That has been central to our operations for the first three years. And they made it very clear that, ‘we are breaking ground on the new stadium in February. And you won’t be able to use this footprint.’ “In trying to navigate how we could continue to race downtown, starting to look at all the traps, the fact that this year, the IndyCar Championship here follows the second week of the NFL. The Titans made a request for us to have that weekend off. “Burke Nihill, the president of the Titans, was very clear. He said, ‘Scott, look, I’ve asked for that weekend to be an away game, but at the end of the day the NFL is going to do what the NFL does.’“OK, noted.”
The date conflict won’t exist for IndyCar at Nashville in 2025 as the season will conclude on Labor Day Weekend, one week before the NFL regular season begins. But with a new stadium under construction for the Titans, Borchetta does not know when, or if, the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix will return to the streets of Nashville. As for Smith and his SMI group of tracks, he will continue to have to navigate around certain race dates that will also include NFL home games in the same market. “When it comes to competition, the NFL is a monster,” NASCAR’s Phelps concluded.
