Formula 1

Sports league as media product: Liberty Media unlocked the IP that the constructors had been sitting on.

Latest filing on file · 2025-12-31

Liberty Media is the filer; Formula 1 is one tracking-stock group inside it. Consolidated figures include other Liberty assets.

Revenue: $4.5B; FY2025 · USD; 10-K · period ended 2025-12-31Source
Operating margin: 12.9%; FY2025; Operating income / revenue · filingSource
Operating cash flow: $908M; FY2025 · USD; 10-K · period ended 2025-12-31Source
Capital expenditures: $119M; FY2025 · USD; 10-K · period ended 2025-12-31Source

Overview

Business model and origins

A top-tier single-seater World Championship defined by the FIA rulebook. The business came later, by centralizing the sport's fragmented commercial rights into one seller.

1 episode2026-06 case file as of

Origin

The FIA standardized the racing 'formula' in the 1920s and the first World Championship ran in 1950, but for decades teams and racetracks negotiated separately and most of the 100-plus teams that ever entered went bankrupt. Bernie Ecclestone turned the sport into a business in the 1970s by convincing the teams to let him centralize all track and television negotiations and route the money through him. Private equity (CVC) owned it through the 2000s; Liberty Media bought it in 2016 and rebuilt it as a media property (Drive to Survive, US races, social media) aimed at the younger, American audience Bernie had dismissed.