Why F1’s top bosses are thinking about a “bigger future”

Greg Maffei: Formula 1 has never been healthier from all indications. Fan interest is incredibly high. We have great on-track competition and we have helped the teams. When we entered Manor, the 11th team had just been sold in receivership for a pound. And today, I don’t think you can buy a team for less than $500 million, maybe $700 million. You can go try. But it’s gonna be hard. It’s an amazing increase in value. And in part, that’s because of the things that have been put in place to try and create more on track competition that also bolsters the health of those teams. You needed to have a healthy ecosystem of teams to make it work. And I think all those things are happening, and you’re seeing the increase in fan interest as well. On TV, in person, we had never had larger events. So pretty good.

Stefano, the key milestone in terms of raising the value of the teams was the cost cap, something that many thought we’d never see achieved in F1.

Stefano Domenicali: Absolutely. I think that the vision that Greg had, together with Chase [Carey], to whom we need to give a big credit, was the need to have a discontinuity from what has happened before. And discontinuity means having the professionalism with a different way to do sports business. It was the vision of making the business of Formula 1 sustainable from a financial point of view. We can talk about revenues that could be higher, but the cost is something that you have for sure. So the only way to make sure that the margin is bigger is to control what you spend. So that was a very big milestone that’s changed completely the vision of the sport and gives the system credibility. Sustainable business means that the teams can invest and grow. All the elements now are secure and financially strong. We can think about the bigger future. Thinking about the bigger future means that we need to be respectful of what has been Formula 1,  but entering new markets that…