Back in September 2025, Rick Ware Racing and Legacy Motor Club reached a settlement that helped LMC secure its path toward a third charter for 2027 in NASCAR. LMC had originally filed suit against RWR back in April 2025, claiming the two parties had agreed to a charter sale for 2026. RWR, though, pushed back, insisting the agreement was always for 2027. After months of courtroom back-and-forth, they settled quietly, with terms kept confidential. But it also set the clock ticking for RFK Racing’s plans.
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RFK Racing has been leasing a charter from RWR for Ryan Preece’s No. 60 entry, and once that charter transfers to LMC, they’ll need to find their own, or Preece will be without a ride come 2027. And Brad Keselowski does not like that thought one bit.
Brad Keselowski wants to buy a charter if available
While talking to SiriusXM about RFK Racing‘s future, Brad Keselowski was more than open to getting a charter for RFK Racing if available. The only obstacle standing in his way is the lack of availability of the charters.
“As it stands today, there are no charters that I’m aware of that are for sale. If there were, we would certainly talk to everybody that we think could potentially sell one and that we know are interested. We will have to see; it still may. We don’t need a charter till February of 2027.
“That said, we really need a charter; we know that. What we can’t control is that they are not making more charters. So we can’t control the fact that somebody has to be willing to sell it first. So we’ll just have to let the cards play out,” Keselowski admitted.
💰 “We can’t control the fact that someone has to be willing to sell it first, so we’ll let the cards play out.” Brad @keselowski on the state of charters as @RFKRacing tries to find a third one for the 2027 season and beyond. More ➡️ sxm.app.link/NASCARIntervie…
And all of this is for one of his underdog drivers, Ryan Preece, who is currently enjoying his best stint. He kicked off 2026 by winning the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium — becoming just the third driver in NASCAR history to win The Clash before winning a Cup points race, joining Jeff Gordon and Denny Hamlin in that company.
Since then, he’s been one of the most quietly consistent drivers in the field, with two top 10s to his name and multiple top-15 finishes. Moreover, he is sitting in P13 in the standings, and RFK Racing has been quite good on the intermediate tracks this year.
Back in Darlington this year, RFK Racing was taking up the top three spots at one point and eyeing a potential victory. So losing a charter the next year could be disastrous for both Preece and Brad Keselowski. Preece will be shut out of the Cup Series since the other drivers have already secured a seat at one of the teams.
As for RFK Racing, they will fall behind once again with the lack of data from their third car. It will also affect Ford negatively since they are running a small program in the Cup Series. So even though there is time until the next season starts, the preparations are already underway. But that raises another important question: How much is Brad Keselowski willing to pay to secure a new charter for his team?
Brad Keselowski calculates the real value of the Cup charter
After 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports settled their lawsuit with NASCAR, it was suggested that the price of the charters in NASCAR is going to shoot up to nearly $80-100 M. And Keselowski laid out the math in plain terms.
“A NASCAR charter is generally worth about $4-10 million in revenue. There’s a ranking system for them. The more the charter has performed over the years, the more it brings in. It’s a pretty safe assumption that the ones at the top are not gonna ever be for sale. That’s Roger Penske, Rick Hendrick, and Joe Gibbs. And the ones further to the bottoms are for sale.
“So if you just apply simple sports math and say 20 times multiple on the charter that has a revenue of 4-5 million. Then you are looking at the $80 million number. That said, not one today has traded for anywhere near that. The last one to trade or sell was about in the $40 million range. That’s a long-winded way of saying it’s going to be about $40-80 million most likely.”
The simple sports math that he is talking about is related to the evaluation of franchises or, in NASCAR’s case, charters. Brad Keselowski explained that, unlike major businesses whose evaluations during a sale are based on the profits they generate, a sports franchise is evaluated on the basis of its revenue.
“Sports trade differently; you might have heard of NFL teams that sell for 5-8 billion dollars. And that’s because sports generally trade franchises at the rate of about 20 times the annual revenue. So not the profit, the revenue,” Keselowski added.
For context, the RWR-LMC charter that sparked all this legal drama reportedly had a sale price of $45 million on the table, which lands squarely in the range Keselowski used.
That said, $40-80 M is a huge sum even for a lower team’s charter. It shows how far the sport has come after the lawsuit settlement, benefiting the team owners. For the same reason, holding a charter in the Cup Series has become much more important for even the backmarker teams.
