NASCAR teams are so unprofitable under the current contract system that most have shuttered in the decade since its inception, driver and team owner Denny Hamlin told a North Carolina federal jury Monday on the first day of a highly anticipated antitrust trial against the private stock car racing organization.

According to Hamlin, who co-owns plaintiff 23XI Racing with basketball legend Michael Jordan, 11 of the 19 teams that signed the original charter contracts with NASCAR in 2016 no longer exist, which he implied is due to unfair terms baked into the agreements.

"Your costs aren't covered to put on their show," Hamlin testified about the expense of getting a car to the track, adding that "there's only one side going out of business."

The charter system was introduced at the behest of the teams to create security, including guaranteed entry in each Cup Series race and a share of the revenue, the jury heard. The original contracts lasted from 2016 to 2024 and were renegotiated for 2025.

But plaintiffs 23XI and Front Row Motorsports claim NASCAR has used the agreements to maintain a chokehold on premier stock car racing — by tying up tracks, limiting teams' ability to race outside the circuit and imposing technical parameters on the cars.

Hamlin is part owner of 23XI but races for another team, Joe Gibbs Racing. He was the first witness to take the stand on Monday as 23XI and Front Row kicked off their case-in-chief in Charlotte's federal courthouse. Hamlin, Jordan and the team's third owner, Jordan's longtime business partner and adviser Curtis Polk, sat courtside in the front row of the gallery for the proceedings.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell ruled ahead of trial that NASCAR has a monopoly over premier stock car racing. 23XI and Front Row are now seeking to prove NASCAR maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive conduct in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. They're asking for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

But NASCAR says the lawsuit is merely a negotiation strategy for the teams. John E. Stephenson Jr. of Alston & Bird, representing NASCAR, told the jury during opening statements Monday that Polk had a "playbook" for negotiating the 2025 charter contracts, which neither 23XI nor Front Row ultimately signed.

According to Stephenson, the approach was to "negotiate through litigation," with Polk hiring antitrust attorneys and making plans to sue if the teams didn't get the terms they wanted. He said Polk was the de facto point person for the teams and was advocating in part for a permanent charter system, which never came to fruition under the 2025 agreements.

"If the charter system is inherently bad, if the charter system is inherently anticompetitive, why were they negotiating for it to go on forever?" Stephenson asked.

He said 23XI and Front Row never raised concerns about NASCAR's supposedly anticompetitive conduct before filing their lawsuit in October 2024. The charters, meanwhile, have skyrocketed in value in the last five years, the jury heard.

According to Stephenson, 23XI bought its first charter from a team that was closing its doors in 2020 for $4.7 million. The team bought its second charter the following year for $13.5 million and its third in 2024 for $28 million, he said.

That means 23XI bought the very thing it now claims was a bad deal "not once, not twice, but three times," Stephenson said.

He said a single charter is now worth north of $45 million. Hamlin, in fact, touted the charter system as a selling point in his pitch to get Jordan to invest in a team, Stephenson said.

He characterized Jim France — the CEO, chairman and co-owner of NASCAR, who is also named as a defendant — as the 81-year-old patriarch of the France family. But he said France played no role in the 2016 charter contracts. Public records show his son, Brian France, was CEO at the time.

Counsel for the teams, meanwhile, told jurors that NASCAR is the only buyer of premier stock car racing services and has abused that power by paying the teams too little. NASCAR can do so because it has eliminated any opportunity for a competing series to form, said Jeffrey Kessler of Winston & Strawn LLP, who represents 23XI and Front Row.

"You either take what you can get or go out of the business," he said during opening statements.

As a result, Kessler said evidence at trial will show that most teams don't make any money. Team financials from 2024 show 75% of other teams actually lost money, he said. 23XI is only profitable because of lucrative sponsorship deals made possible by Jordan, the jury heard.

Kessler said the teams are forced to accept what NASCAR gives them because they love stock car racing and there's nowhere else for them to go.

In reality, "the average team doesn't have a chance to make a profit," he said.

Hamlin echoed the assertion during his testimony, saying 23XI competes with both NASCAR and other teams for sponsors. Jordan is his "strategic advantage" when it comes to clinching sponsorships, he told the jury. But Kessler said every team doesn't have someone like Jordan to help.

Before charters, Kessler said the teams only got paid from their sponsors and NASCAR's prize money. When that became too tenuous, he said the teams went to NASCAR for help, and the charter system was born.

But Kessler told the jury that the teams didn't receive a fair shake under the original 2016 contracts. In a competitive market, he said the teams would get 45% of league revenues. But NASCAR gave them only 25% or 26%, he said.

When it came time to renegotiate for 2025, Kessler told the jury that the teams didn't get anything they asked for, including permanent charters. While NASCAR did agree to pay them $12.5 million per car, he said it was far from the $20 million they sought.

Hamlin testified that the $20 million figure stems from a study NASCAR and the teams conducted to estimate how much it costs to race a car in every Cup Series race. That's just what it costs to get a car to the track, he said, and doesn't include paying the drivers or the cost of marketing and social media to maintain sponsorship.

Stephenson, however, told the jury that the team owners are wealthy people who race to win and will spend what's necessary to do it. He said it's their prerogative how they manage themselves, and many of the owners aren't in it to make a profit.

Hamlin is expected to continue testifying Tuesday.

Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing are represented by Jeffrey L. Kessler, Jeanifer Parsigian, Danielle Williams, Joshua Hafenbrack, Michael Toomey and Matthew R. DalSanto of Winston & Strawn LLP.

NASCAR is represented by John E. Stephenson Jr. of Alston & Bird LLP, Chris Yates, Lawrence E. Buterman, Ashley M. Bauer, Anna M. Rathbun, Jennifer L. Giordano, Marguerite M. Sullivan, David L. Johnson and Christopher J. Brown of Latham & Watkins LLP and Tricia W. Magee of Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP.

The case is 2311 Racing LLC et al. v. National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing LLC et al., case number 3:24-cv-00886, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.