According to several recent reports in the International media, American mass media company Liberty Media are “quite interested in relinquishing the rights” to Formula 1, especially due to the a power struggle with the FIA.
The American owners of the sport believe they could make a profit of “about $8 billion” if they would sell Formula One at this stage, Sport1 reports.
Liberty Media Corporation, which were recently named as the world’s most valuable sports empire by American business magazine Forbes, are evaluated at about $21bn, of which Formula 1 is worth $17.1bn. They have recently rejected an offer from Saudi Arabia in early-2022 to purchase the sport. Bloomberg informs that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund considered an attempt to add Formula 1 motor racing to its growing portfolio of sports investments and was willing to pay £20bn.
In addition to this, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund is willing to even raising its offer, as reported by the financial, software, data, and media company Bloomberg.
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem then addressed the rumoured $20billion buyout bid from Saudi Arabia, calling for “common sense” from potential buyers and downplaying that huge price-tag in a series of posts on Twitter. That move was not appreciated by the Formula 1 team bosses, who sent a letter of complaint to the governing body.
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A few days later, it emerged that Mohammed Ben Sulayem made sexist comments on an old website. Formula 1 team bosses could try to take advantage of the leaked comments in order to pressurise Ben Sulayem out of his FIA role in case the power struggle continues. One other key topic of disagreement between the two sides is the potential entry of Andretti into Formula 1, which would therefore include more than ten teams.
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