Let’s just be clear: Tyler Reddick is your 2026 Daytona 500 champion. For that matter, Tyle Reddick is the first driver in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series to start the season with three straight wins.
He accomplished this while driving the #45 Toyota owned by 23XI Racing, a team that is co-owned by NASCAR superstar Denny Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan.
In the aftermath of Reddick’s Daytona win, the media covered the accomplishment as if Jordan basically won the race. (Case in point: Canada’s CP24 network just announced that Michael Jordan’s NASCAR team had won the Daytona 500, never mentioning Reddick was the driver.
Make no mistake. Michael Jordan is the greatest NBA player of all time. (Sorry to the Lebron fans out there.) He is also, by his own admission, a life-time NASCAR fan. But beyond that, Jordan’s race day contribution is to stand on pit road. Of course, Fox and the slew of other networks that one must have to keep up with NASCAR these days always have a camera near Jordan to record his every reaction.
But while Jordan isn’t deciding whether to short pit or take two tires instead of four, he is still making major contributions to the success of 23XI Racing. After all, the executives at the sponsoring companies may have never heard of Tyler Reddick or the Circuit of the Americas, but they have certainly heard of Michael Jordan. Depending on your brand, who wouldn’t want to be associated with him?
Jordan is also making major contributions to NASCAR. (I won’t get into the whole lawsuit deal.) Even if the mainstream media is trying to promote a narrative (as they are want to do) that Michael Jordan is responsible for on-track wins, it serves the purpose of raising the profile of NASCAR, a sport all too often ignored when it comes to sports coverage due to the stereotyping of fans as being ignorant redneck hillbillies (and in the 2020s, all MAGA Trump supporters).
NASCAR has campaigned heavily over the last 30-plus years to get away from that “negative image” by moving out of the south, not totally but wherever possible. This meant (albeit temporarily) leaving small southern tracks like North Wilkesboro and Rockingham in favour of more northern tracks, encouraging drivers from California more than the Carolinas and the ill-fated attempt to bring the Clash to the Coliseum. In some cases, the moves worked; others, not so much.
By putting Michael Jordan as front and centre as possible, NASCAR is hoping to draw new fans from the world of basketball. More than 87 million people in the U.S. have watched NBA games during the 2025-26 season, marking the highest viewership in 15 years. The benefits of being able to draw even a portion of that audience from the court to the track would be tremendous.
If word gets out that Michael Jordan is hanging with the NASCAR crowd, that’s going to entice a lot of NBA fans to at least check out the next race, even if only hoping to catch a glimpse of the basketball legend.
Of course, it’s one thing to get millions of NBA fans to tune in, it’s another to get them to stick around and watch NASCAR on a regular basis. In a way (and this is where I’m going to lose a lot of you), it is similar to what the WWF (now WWE) did back in the mid-80s when they launched their “Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection” storyline in advance of the first Wrestlemania.
Instead of mainstream sports like the NBA, the WWF partnered with MTV and Hollywood, bringing in celebrities like Cindy Lauper and Mr. T. and airing matched on MTV. Somehow the pairing worked and the era of WrestleMania ushered in one of the most successful periods in wrestling history.
But while celebrities may have drawn in the MTV and Hollywood crowd to make WrestleMania a success, it was the men and women who were travelling 300-plus days a year that made the subsequent house shows at Boston Gardens, Madison Square Garden, the Philadelphia Spectrum and the TV tapings in Poughkeepsie, New York and the Saturday Night Main Event broadcasts work. It wasn’t Mr. T or Cindy Lauper who kept the momentum going, it was Ricky Steamboat and the Junk Yard Dog and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and, no matter how history has since decided to judge him, Hulk Hogan who kept the momentum going. The blend of showmanship and athleticism drew in hundreds and thousands of fans to the point where WrestleMania III drew 93,000 people (internet smark theories be damned!) to the Pontiac Silverdome three years later.
The WWF and later WWE (to say nothing of WCW) seemed to think that formula would work forever, so much so that they continued to trot out celebrities that continued to decrease in prestige as the years went by. Mike Tyson at WrestleMania XIV worked; Snooki at WrestleMania XXVII, not so much. Of course, Tyson – seen, much like Mr. T, as a legitimate bad-ass, was used as a special referee in a moment that changed the course of professional wrestling and the infamous Monday Night Wars, during a period that, much like of the mid-80s and the first WrestleMania, was considered a boom period for the industry.
Snooki, famous for being on a reality show featuring entitled kids acting as stupid as possible, got a pinfall over Michelle McCool for her team. The appearance didn’t even register on the momentum needle as few fans of Jersey Shore seemed to care and the overall show was considered to be one of the worst WrestleMania’s of all time, since it was merely a set-up for John Cena vs. the Rock a year later. As it turns out, Snooki’s match wasn’t the worst match on the card. That distinction was saved for Jerry Lawler vs. Michael Cole.
This does, however, bring me to my point. It is fine for NASCAR to have a celebrity such as Michael Jordan (or for that matter Pitbull who was part owner of Trackhouse Racing or whoever is serving as the Grand Marshall at a particular race) as long as (a) no one has the ridiculous idea that Jordan should drive the #45 car at Phoenix this week and (b) the on-track product is such that it will retain the fans drawn to the sport by the celebrity appearance.
If the announcement that Michael Jordan’s team had won the Daytona 500 sparked an interest in watching NASCAR for those who had never watched a race, having Atlanta (a drafting track albeit on a smaller scale) was a godsend for NASCAR. It provided similar action to Daytona and would have kept the fans interested. I’ve never been a fan of road courses but miraculously, COTA gave us a pretty decent race, with Reddick battling Shane Van Gisbergen for the lead in the late stages of the race.
The 2026 Cup Season has started off fairly well, and the fact that Reddick won the subsequent races after the Daytona 500 was definitely a good thing to maintain momentum. For anyone watching, it was a nice bit of history. For the fans who might have come in to watch Michael Jordan’s team, it couldn’t have played out any better.
The hope is, of course, that they’ll come for Michael Jordan and stay for not just Tyler Reddick, but teammates Bubba Wallace, Riley Herbst, co-owner Denny Hamlin, and for that matter, this Carson Hocevar everyone keeps talking about and Shane Van Gisbergen, who does so well on road courses.
A media spotlight on Michael Jordan’s involvement can do wonders for NASCAR, but it will be up to NASCAR, the drivers and the on-track action to take the baton and run with it, proving that what fans will see every week is enough to keep people coming back.
johnmilner.ca 