The teams would like to share Formula One!
In the United States, major basketball, American football, and baseball teams own their championships, allowing them to share the generated revenues. This could give ideas to F1 teams as discussions on the commercial future of F1 are initiated.
The official announcement of the interest from News Corp and Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family, on the eve of the Turkish Grand Prix has ignited a firestorm. All the F1 stakeholders are making statements: while Bernie Ecclestone considers himself very skeptical about this declaration of intent, the FIA states that it will need to be consulted if a sale were to take place.
Martin Whitmarsh, as president of FOTA representing the teams, told Autosport that the teams might be interested in the possibility of becoming F1 shareholders: (e)I think in the end, it is desirable for the teams to own the commercial rights. CVC has stated, or its representatives have stated, that they do not plan to sell, but there are not many investment funds that want to keep businesses in their accounts indefinitely. Who knows? I don’t have any privileged information and I haven’t personally had discussions with CVC.»
This statement from McLaren’s boss is not innocent as he wants to get the other teams back in the race. As we mentioned during Exor’s statement, it is highly unlikely that Ferrari’s closest rivals would let the Scuderia take over the commercial rights alone. However, Ferrari might have managed to trigger a reaction from the other teams to follow its project.
But for Martin Whitmarsh, the most important thing is that F1 can develop in stability: «I think that the teams primarily want to ensure stability. We want to be sure that the sport is sustainable, and to be sustainable, you need the appropriate level of investment to promote and develop the sport. You need an appropriate distribution of revenue to the teams to ensure their future. Fundamentally, for most teams, who the owner is not the biggest concern. I think the teams, we will have to ask ourselves if, each of us, we want to be shareholders in the future, if the current owners wanted to sell. I suspect we will do so at some point, but we still have time. »
Nevertheless, the teams are also companies in their own right with their own shareholders. These shareholders may also have a strong involvement in the process, especially when the Abu Dhabi fund is a shareholder of Ferrari and the Bahrain fund has a presence in McLaren’s capital. This is why Eric Boullier, the director of Lotus Renault GP, states: « If there is strong interest from a buyer or someone who wants to enter the purchasing process, I understand that there will have to be discussions with the team owners. » The Frenchman is all the more qualified to speak on the subject, as the 100% owner of the team is none other than the Luxembourg investment fund, Genii Capital.
The discussions in the paddocks during the upcoming events should therefore be quite interesting and could radically change the business model of F1 as we know it today.
With the participation of RacingBusiness.fr
