Business Structure and Decision-making Policies
NASCAR's business structure has also been criticized. Since its founding in 1947 by William France Sr., the overall NASCAR organization has been majority owned by the France family, ensuring that the family controls a majority of the overwhelming revenue that the sport generates (compared to other sports where the owners and players split revenue almost evenly). NASCAR is also criticized for its reluctance to promote some aspects of safety that it would have to pay for (e.g., traveling safety crew), and other allegedly monopolistic aspects such as merchandising and race-track ownership. The case for a traveling safety crew was never credibly made by NASCAR critics; it revolved around citing the use of traveling safety crews by Indy car racing, but no case was made that the in-house track safety crews used by NASCAR were in any way inferior in performance to the traveling crew of Indy cars.
In addition, due to its overwhelming influence and lack of drivers' say, NASCAR has even been compared to a dictatorship by some motorsports, political, and economic analysts. Examples of such influence included the cancellation of the Speed Channel television show Pit Bull (which frequently criticized many of NASCAR's decisions and policies and enjoyed modest ratings), frequent use of the vague "detrimental to NASCAR" rule, and the creation of rules on whim, especially during a race. NASCAR has taken to penalizing drivers in recent years, with fines, point penalties, and lap penalties in races for drivers or mechanics who use obscene language in interviews to the media.
Because of Speed Channel's heavy affiliation with NASCAR, a good amount of the network's programming is NASCAR-related.
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of NASCAR
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