Formula 1: Wheeling and dealing

An American revolution

While Europe has been Formula 1’s traditional heartland since the championship’s inaugural season in 1950, F1’s continuing mission is to explore strange new markets, seek out new fans and corporate partnerships, and boldly go where no Grand Prix has gone before.

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Things took a star-spangled turn in 2016 when American entertainment conglomerate Liberty Media purchased F1’s commercial rights and wrestled control away from Bernie Ecclestone, the championship’s previous impresario. Ecclestone initially bought F1’s television rights from the FIA, international motorsport’s governing body, in 1976 for pennies on the dollar when he was simply a team owner.

Television quickly grew the sport’s reach in terms of audience size and broadcast revenue. However, Ecclestone grew to become a stodgy, tech-averse chief executive by the early 2010s and F1 stagnated during social media’s rise to prominence. Liberty saw the championship’s untapped potential and pounced.

By the digits

$1 million: The amount that Bernie Ecclestone initially paid for F1’s TV rights in 1976. ($5,648,732 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation).

$4.4 billion: The amount that Liberty Media paid to acquire F1’s commercial rights in 2016.

$3.2 billion: The reported annual revenue of Formula 1 over the 2023 calendar year. The total was nearly a 75% increase relative to 2017’s mark, the first season under Liberty’s control.

The times they are a-changing!

A digital drive to thrive

The Netflix docuseries Formula 1: Drive To Survive is the shining city on the hill (or French Riviera), symbolizing the sport’s new era for fans, debuting in 2019 to widespread praise. Viewers were offered unprecedented access to the inner workings of the globe-trotting tour. Drivers and team bosses once viewed as out-of-touch elites, quickly became darlings across every social media platform. Former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner became an unexpected breakout star with profanity-filled statements and brash door-slamming behavior.

While Netflix attempted to capture lightning in a bottle again with Full Swing and Break Point, professional golf and tennis haven’t seen the same swell in mainstream interest. Things went differently for F1 because Liberty set the groundwork to capitalize on the interested eyeballs. The company ensured in its deal with ESPN that races would air commercial-free in the United States. Liberty also launched F1 TV in 2018, a direct-to-consumer streaming service that allows die-hard fans to watch every session live with access to onboard cams and live timing data.

This influx of younger, more diverse fans created a vocal online presence standing in direct opposition to F1’s more conservative establishment. The new fanbase challenged the sport’s lack of female representation and encouraged seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton’s efforts to make F1 more racially inclusive. To appease automakers, F1 is adopting a new ruleset in 2026 to champion sustainability. The regulations will be built around a 1,000-horsepower power unit, with a 50-50 split between electrical propulsion and a sustainably fueled internal combustion engine.

The Grand Prix calendar still remains a relic yet to be toppled. Ecclestone established new events on the nominal notion that F1 was apolitical. If a country could build a world-class racing venue and pay the astronomically high sanctioning fees, it could join the schedule regardless of whether it was a liberal democracy or despotic autocracy. Liberty has doubled down on this strategy, signing Qatar and Saudi Arabia to decade-long deals valued at $55 million per year each.

This strategy is slightly different for races stateside where event revenue is fueled by premium ticket sales instead of national oil wealth. In recent years, the established United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas has been joined by two new races organized by F1 itself instead of a local promoter: the Miami Grand Prix and the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The raucous affairs are a mix of F1’s European glitz and glamor with the pop pageantry of American pro sports. However, spectators are expected to pay four figures for the privilege of attending these new races.

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Illustration: Vicky Leta

As the highest class of international racing for open-wheel, single-seater cars, F1 is worth more than $18 billion and stands to accelerate even more as a bonafide entertainment business, as the Euro-born sport becomes more popular in China, the United States, and elsewhere. But F1 also faces its challenges, from new driving tech to new electrification pressures.

In the third episode of the 8th season of the Quartz Obsession podcast, Jalopnik writer Ryan Erik King navigates a few high-speed laps around the past, present, and future of Formula 1 racing with host Rocio Fabbro in F1: The global race to the future.

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Quotable

“Maybe the World Cup final is still the biggest overall, but it’s for one day every four years – and we’ve got 23 races, so it’s 23 Super Bowls.” — Zak Brown, McLaren Racing CEO. 2024 is actually the sport’s longest season ever with 24 races.

Pop quiz

Photo: Rudy Carezzevoli (Getty Images)

Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund is the majority owner of which F1 team?

A. Williams
B. McLaren
C. Aston Martin
D. Alpine

Race to the bottom of this email to find out.

Brief history

1894: The first successful car race is run over a 78-mile route in France from Paris to Rouen. Paris-based Le Petit Journal, the then-world’s largest newspaper, organized the event.

1900: The Automobile Club de France organizes the Coupe Internationale, racing’s first world championship. The event was more commonly referred to as the Gordon Bennett Cup because the famed New York Herald editor donated the trophy.

1906: The ACF establishes the inaugural Grand Prix after the organization discontinued the Gordon Bennett Cup amid a political dispute with the other national clubs. The French Grand Prix served as the framework for similar races in other countries.

1950: The FIA organizes the inaugural season of the Formula 1 World Championship, comprising the most prestigious national grands prix.

1968: The FIA deregulates sponsorship in international motorsport, allowing companies outside the automotive industry to sponsor teams and cars to race in branded liveries instead of mandated national colors.

1979: The BBC acquires the exclusive rights to broadcast Formula 1 races in the United Kingdom, the symbolic start of the championship’s perpetual presence on television.

Fun fact!

Mercedes-Benz has won racing world championships in three different centuries, emblematic of the automaker’s prodigious legacy.

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NBC purchased the rights to air Formula 1 in 2013. The advertising push for the season showed how Americans perceived F1 at the time. It was a lavish jet-setting world tour that visited exotic locations and hosted thrilling races with A-list celebrities in attendance. The competition itself was the name on the marquee, not any particular team or driver.

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Today’s email was written by Ryan Erik King and edited and produced by Morgan Haefner (won’t sleep until Carlos Sainz is signed).

The correct answer to the pop quiz is B., McLaren. Mumtalakat, the Kingdom of Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, completed a full takeover of McLaren in March 2024. The fund initially purchased a 30% stake in 2007. It has been a partnership that endured a suppressed civil uprising in 2011 alongside the racing team’s ups and downs.

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