Nascar Unveils Super Bowl Plans To Shift Gears For Championship Weekend
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 at 02:52PM By Barry Janoff
Montage: NascarMay 6, 2025: For the past 23 years, Nascar has held its Championship Weekend at just two tracks: Homestead-Miami from 2002-2019, and then Phoenix Raceway from 2020-Oct. 31-Nov. 2.,2025.
Championship Weekend will return to Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2026 but then will see a major change: Nascar said beginning in 2026 it plans to rotate the location for the Cup, Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series finale among its “marquee venues and key markets.”
The strategy mirrors the NFL, which names Super Bowl locations years ahead in various “neutral site” cities.
Under its current contract, NBC Sports, which has broadcast the Cup playoffs and championship race since 2015, will do so through 2031.
“If you’ve watched a lot of other sports properties that are moving the location around year after year, part of that is to build up pent-up demand,” Ben Kennedy, Nascar evp and chief venue and racing innovation officer, said via the organization.
“But part of it is that variability in a lot of the markets, and then a little bit of it is what we talked about as well is just having a little bit of differentiation as it relates to the competition and racing product as well.”
According to Kennedy, “Having the playoffs be more unpredictable every year, the championship venue to be at a different location, I think gives you the ability to see different teams and drivers kind of rise to the occasion to be able to be crowned a champion.”
Nascar said Homestead-Miami Speedway and Phoenix Raceway would be in the mix to host Championship Weekend, but specific tracks are still to be determined,
Kennedy said locations being considered would come from Nascar, Speedway Motorsports and independent ownership groups.
“I would say it’s four or five things,” Kennedy said regarding determining factors. “It’s marketing and promotion, for sure, and it’s location. We want to be in a warm-weather market. Ideally, being in November, that first week of November, it kind of limits you to the amount of races that you can run.
“In Phoenix, we put over $100 million into the redevelopment of that track, and it was a big catalyst for bringing this championship to the West Coast. We’re going to be putting a good amount of capital into Homestead as well ahead of the race.
“The racing product, I think, is another big part of this. And then overall, it’s just the entire industry’s feedback on this. So we collaborate with our broadcast partners, our teams. We hear from our drivers what they think, a lot of our corporate partners, and then ultimately the fans, and the fans have a large voice in this, and we get their perspective on it every single year.”
Industry analysts said venues under consideration could include Charlotte Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway.
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