Cars and motorbikes under the same roof. The news has been circulating for some time but now the operation seems to have reached a turning point. As revealed by the Financial Timesthe owner of Formula 1 Liberty Media would be one step away from acquiring Dorna Sportsa company that owns MotoGP with an operation for over 4 billion euros.
John Malonetelecommunications and entertainment billionaire owner of Liberty, beat off competition from TkoHollywood broker Ari Emanuel’s sports and entertainment group, and Qatar Sports Investmentsa fund that owns Paris Saint-Germain.
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The agreement, ready to be made official as early as next week, would allow the giant chaired by Malone to get its hands on the rich commercial revenues guaranteed by MotoGP. Dorna, a company based in Madrid, promotes various competitions, including the World Championship Superbikes and the MotoE electric racing motorcycle class, for a total of 251 races organized each year in 20 countries.
Under the Antitrust spotlight
The deal will most likely come under regulatory scrutiny. As he reveals James Killick, a competition lawyer at White & Case, the size of a potential combined group makes competition investigations “quite likely”, both in countries such as the UK and Germany, and at a European level. There is no shortage of precedents.
In 2006, pressure from the EU Antitrust brought the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to sell MotoGP to buy F1, which then passed to Liberty in 2017 for 8 billion dollars.
The relaunch of Formula 1
Liberty managed to relaunch F1 in the USA thanks to a strategy based on cost control and investments in technologies. Added to this was the introduction of the GPs in Miami, Las Vegas, Jeddah and Doha, for a total of 24 annual races, as well as an unprecedented agreement with Netflix for Drive to Survive, the series focused on the behind the scenes of the Formula 1 World Championship.
The series’ impact in the United States has led to a growth in audience per race from 547,722 viewers in 2018 to 1.4 million viewers in 2022. This popularity helped F1 secure a three-year deal with Espn of the value of 75-90 million dollars (previous deal for broadcast rights was $5 million).
In 2023, F1’s operating profit increased by 64% to 392 million dollars compared to the previous year, while revenues rose to $3.2 billion from $2.5 billion. Dorna’s revenues in 2023 amounted to 483 million euros.
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