NASCAR 2025 In-Season Tournament
NASCAR has announced that in 2025 the Cup Series will feature a In-Season Tournament, this idea originated from European soccer where most leagues have an in season cup. In America though this idea gained popularity during the 2023-2024 NBA season when they hosted a In-Season Tournament which ultimately saw the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Indiana Pacers in Las Vegas for the NBA Cup. This was a brilliant idea, adding something extra mid season to put attention on random Tuesday and Thursday night games that might have been skipped by viewers normally.
So how does an In-Season Tournament translate into racing and specify NASCAR? Well to the same effect that it had on mid season NBA games, having a tournament during the summer it will add interest to races people might be less engaged with watching, like New Hampshire, Pocono and Nashville. These tracks don't bring in the most viewers so adding something extra on top to follow throughout the broadcast or at the track will be awesome.
How does it work? 32 drivers are seeded based on finishing position the 3 races before the In-Season Tournament. The seeding will determine the head to head matchup that will play out during a normal race. Starting the Tournament off at Atlanta and going for 4 weeks after, drivers will face off head to head against whoever they are set to face that week 1 vs 32, 2 vs 31 and so on. Once week 5 of the In-Season Tournament takes place 2 drivers will remain and whoever finishes higher will get 1 million dollars.
This format will bring a lot of excitement to the TNT portion of the schedule that will be helpful for a new broadcast partner. I'm very excited to see how it all plays out next summer. I feel this will reward consistency which is something that used to be key in NASCAR to win a championship pre chase in 2004 but has truly gone away with the 2014 chase win and your in set up that was only expanded in 2017 when the chase became the playoffs. Obviously this isn't a championship but it will still be cool to see what a good top 10 or top 5 run can get a driver like we used to see.
In my previous article Predicting the 2025 NASCAR Schedule I said the TNT portion of the season would be race 18 New Hampshire, race 19 Nashville, race 20 Chicago Street Course, race 21 Pocono and race 22 Canada. I think it will still be similar. Atlanta was announced as the opening race for TNT but I could see the schedule for TNT and the In-Season Tournament being Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago Street Course, New Hampshire and Pocono. Again as I stated in the beginning of this article the In-Season Tournament should be used to add excitement to tracks that could use something extra and will make it worth tuning into, I know a race like New Hampshire is overlooked by a lot of fans that aren't from New England so giving a race like that a important event like this should help with viewership.
Overall I'm very excited for this In-Season Tournament next year, I love trying new things. It's something I like to do in my video series, the GTA Online Race Playlist, so to see my favorite sport try something new and exciting it's really awesome to see. I loved the In-Season Tournament for the NBA and I know I'll love it for NASCAR as well.