F1 Fanatic

I’d like to know where the billions are going to come from. Long-term it’s a feasible plan, but I don’t see it happening soon especially if News Corp do buy it, which will jack up the valuation of the sport.

@Red Andy the point of them owning part of F1 as a unit would be to structure it single share single vote like the English Premier League and other sports. Which means that Ferrari don’t have the sway they have now and can’t do anything about ‘smaller teams’

They don’t need to find billions – they only need to find a few hundred million and some PE leverage (if they want to buy all of it)

This is what F1 was supposed to be, until bernie took control of the areas that make money (I doubt martin would do the same)

I don’t think FOTA ownership is such a great idea. FOTA is a very unbalanced organisation politically, with the bigger teams having a disproportionate influence. When you have the likes of Ferrari saying they don’t even want the smaller teams in F1 at all, you have to question whether FOTA would be capable of acting in the sport’s best interests.

I agree with this. You can’t have the people who play by the rules being the ones to set and enforce those rules. It’s one of the main reasons why the infamous breakaway series was doomed to fail from its inception. I’m all for giving the teams more influence, but I don’t think they should have a controlling stake. I very much doubt they have enough money to buy the rights, unless they pool their end-of-season payouts – but even then, the team who wins the WCC will have the most say in the running of the sport, and the teams that finish 11th and 12th will have none at all. FOTA already have enough bargaining power with the Concorde Agreement.

I didn’t realise holding the commercial rights to a sport enables you to change its rules…