Liberty Media Corporation Agrees To Acquire Formula One

U.S. based conglomerate Liberty Media Corporation has reached an initial agreement to acquire Formula One, but Bernie Ecclestone will remain as the league’s CEO.

Formula One will soon have a new parent company, but the league is keeping the same boss.

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Liberty Media Corporation, a conglomerate whose other investments include stakes in the MLB’s Atlanta Braves, Time Warner and SiriusXM, announced on Wednesday that it has reached an agreement to acquire F1 from its current ownership.

The company has begun the process to acquire 100 percent of shares in F1 from Delta Topco and then assign them to its subsidiary Liberty Media Group, which will then be renamed the Formula One Group. You can read the fine print of the business deal in the link above.

But what racing fans will be interested in is any effect in the on-track product and the new owners aren’t shaking the trees just yet. The announcement also declared that Bernie Ecclestone will stay on as Chief Executive Officer of F1 under the new ownership.

Chase Carey will join him as the new Chairman of F1 through a mutual agreement between Delta Topco and Liberty Media.

Ecclestone’s statement in Wednesday’s press release was brief: “I would like to welcome Liberty Media and Chase Carey to Formula One,” he said, “and I look forward to working with them.”

While there may not be an immediate change at the top of Formula One, there might be some big buzz further down the ladder. Racer has noted that the terms of the acquisition deal, should it go through – there are still various approvals, including that of the FIA, to obtain – would allow for the teams of F1 to invest in the league itself.

Here’s the relevant verbiage:

"The teams will be given the opportunity to participate in the investment in Formula 1, and the detailed terms of that investment will be agreed in due course. Certain teams have already expressed an interest in investing after completion of the acquisition."

Liberty Media didn’t name the interested teams, and surely that level of interest depends on what those to-be-decided terms wind up being, but allowing the actual competitors in Formula One to have a financial stake in the organization would be a sea change.

Honestly, fans may not see the effects of this takeover for months or years to come. Though there is an agreement in place nothing has been one hundred percent ratified yet, and even then it will take time for the new ownership to start making its moves.

Particularly with keeping Ecclestone at his post – a decision that will rankle some as he’s no stranger to controversy – it’s not as if the new ownership automatically means a brand new day for F1.

But there is perhaps room for cautious optimism. Formula One still has room to grow its profile in the United States; it was just last year that the United States Grand Prix was in jeopardy after the state of Texas cut its funding to the race. Liberty Media being a U.S. based company, it would stand to reason that they’d want to help build up F1’s stateside profile – and given what else is in the company’s portfolio they’ve certainly got some resources to do it.

Hopefully the shifting business of Formula One will amount to renewed prosperity for one of the world’s most storied racing series.

What do you think about ownership of Formula One changing hands?

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