If the ONLY thing you are concerned about is extracting the last dollar from the networks, and your sport is at it's peak of popularity and influence, it doesn't take a ton of talent to cut that deal. I would have taken less money to get a deal done with ESPN/ABC and made sure my sport was getting talked about umpteen time a day of Sports Center, get the maximum number of races on network TV and the rest on what was probably the most widespread cable channel there is, and where people go when they are looking for sports content. NASCAR has consistently been dumped off onto lesser channels to use the loyal NASCAR fans to build up ratings on those channels. If you are NASCAR, you want to be on channels where their viewership is being brought to YOU. This doesn't begin to touch the issue of where NASCAR goes if the networks decide they are no longer interested in signing a big TV deal. (a distinct possibility). Had they developed their own network two decades ago, they could have gotten well established in prime positions on cable networks and built up the structure that would have helped then jump into the streaming realm rather easily. If the are forced to develop all of that capability NOW, they will definitely be playing from behind and they will be doing it with far fewer sponsorship dollars and about a third of the fan base they had in 2000. Sure those TV contract brought in huge amounts of money, but basically all it did was make the France family even richer and send the sport down an unsustainable growth curve. Now here we are 20 years later, trying desperately to put the cost genie back in the bottle and trying to sell reduced expectations to corporate America.