Left for Dead to $3.65 Billion — How Formula 1 Became Sport’s Biggest Comeback Story

In January 2017, a 5-foot-2, 86-year-old Englishman who had controlled Formula 1 for four decades was given the title “Chairman Emeritus” — a role he later admitted he’d never heard of — and shown the door. Bernie Ecclestone, the son of a Suffolk fisherman who had turned a chaotic European motorsport into a multibillion-dollar global business, was out.

Liberty Media, the American conglomerate that also owns SiriusXM and Live Nation, had just paid $8 billion to buy the commercial rights to the sport. The deal valued those rights — not the cars, not the circuits, not the teams, just the right to sell the broadcast and sponsorship packages — at $4.4 billion. CVC Capital Partners, the private equity firm that had owned F1 since 2006, made a handsome return. Ecclestone personally walked away with $4.7 billion.

At the time, plenty of people thought Liberty had overpaid. F1’s global TV audience had dropped 40 per cent since its 2008 peak. Social media presence was virtually non-existent. The sport had no marketing department, no digital strategy, and no meaningful foothold in the United States, the world’s biggest sports media market. The average US race drew fewer than 500,000 viewers. The sport was bleeding relevance.

Eight years later, Formula 1 generated $3.65 billion in revenue in 2024. By mid-2025, quarterly revenue had hit $1.34 billion — a 35 per cent surge year on year. The average F1 team is now worth $3.42 billion, more than the average Major League Baseball franchise. Ferrari alone is valued at $6.4 billion. Even Haas, the grid’s least valuable team, is worth $1.68 billion — a figure that would have placed it fourth on the grid just two years ago.

This is the story of how F1 makes its money, how one man built the machine, and how a different kind of owner supercharged it.

How Bernie Built It

To understand where F1’s money comes from, you have to understand what Ecclestone did in the 1970s and 1980s — because the financial architecture he created still underpins the sport today.

Ecclestone bought the Brabham F1 team in 1971. At the time, Formula 1 was a shambles. Teams were broke. Circuits were dangerous. Television coverage was patchy and poorly paid. The governing body, the FIA, controlled the money. The teams got scraps.

Ecclestone changed that by organising the teams into a collective bargaining unit — the Formula One Constructors’ Association, or FOCA — and then waging a political war against the FIA for control of the commercial rights. He was brilliant at it. His negotiating style was part intimidation, part charm, part divide-and-conquer. He would cut side deals with individual teams to break any collective resistance, then use the stronger position to negotiate harder with the next opponent.

The breakthrough came with the 1981 Concorde Agreement, the contract that defines how F1’s money is split between the governing body, the commercial rights holder, and the teams. Under that deal, FOCA — which Ecclestone effectively controlled — won the right to negotiate all TV contracts. It was the moment F1 became a business rather than a hobby.

By 1987, Ecclestone had shifted the commercial rights from FOCA to his own company, Formula One Management. Under the revenue split, 47 per cent of TV income went to the teams, 30 per cent to the FIA, and 23 per cent to FOM — meaning Ecclestone. FOM also collected all race hosting fees on top. In 2000, the FIA voted unanimously to extend the commercial rights lease to Ecclestone’s company for 100 years, until 2110, for a payment of just $360 million. There was no competitive bidding. He was the only candidate.

Ecclestone’s business model was straightforward. He sold exclusive TV broadcast rights country by country, typically to the highest bidder. He charged governments and promoters enormous hosting fees — currently around $25 to $65 million per race, with annual escalators built in — for the privilege of staging a Grand Prix. And he took a cut of trackside advertising and corporate hospitality. The model was simple, extractive, and enormously profitable. By 2013, F1’s annual revenue had reached $1.7 billion with profits exceeding $530 million.

But there was a problem. Ecclestone was brilliant at squeezing money out of existing assets. He was terrible at growing new ones.

He dismissed social media as “nonsense.” He famously said he had no interest in young fans because “most of these kids haven’t got any money.” He banned teams from posting paddock content online, fearing it would cannibalise TV rights. He made no serious attempt to crack the American market. And he moved races behind paywalls in key markets, which boosted short-term broadcast fees while slowly killing the casual audience. Between 2008 and 2016, global viewership fell by roughly a third. When CVC Capital Partners — which had extracted an estimated $4.5 billion in profits during its ownership while investing almost nothing back into growth — decided to sell, the sport was in decline.

What Liberty Changed

Liberty Media’s approach was the opposite of Ecclestone’s in almost every respect. Where Ecclestone maximised extraction, Liberty invested in growth. Where Ecclestone hoarded control of content, Liberty opened the floodgates.

The changes started immediately. Liberty hired executives from media and entertainment backgrounds. They created marketing, sponsorship, and digital departments — none of which had existed under Ecclestone. They rebranded the sport with a new logo and a new theme song. They relaxed the strict content rules that had prevented teams and drivers from posting on social media. And they identified the single biggest untapped opportunity: the United States.

The masterstroke was a Netflix documentary. Sean Bratches, Liberty’s commercial operations chief, proposed a behind-the-scenes series that would humanise the drivers and turn the paddock into a soap opera. In March 2019, Formula 1: Drive to Survive premiered. It was an instant hit.

The impact was seismic. US race viewership on ESPN climbed from an average of roughly 500,000 per race before the show to over 1.3 million by 2022. Nielsen found that more than 360,000 viewers who had never watched F1 in late 2021 started watching races in 2022 after watching Drive to Survive. More than half of American F1 fans said the show played a role in their becoming fans. The average F1 viewer’s age dropped from 36 to 32. The share of female fans rose from 8 per cent in 2017 to 18 per cent by 2021.

The commercial consequences were immediate. ESPN had picked up the F1 broadcast rights in 2018 essentially for free, after NBC walked away from its previous $4 million annual deal. After Drive to Survive took off, ESPN paid $5 million a year from 2020 to 2022. Then the price exploded: $75 million for 2023, rising to $90 million by 2025 — a 1,500 per cent increase in just a few years.

The global audience followed. Cumulative TV viewership grew from roughly 1.4 billion in 2017 to 1.6 billion in 2024. Social media followers rocketed from near zero under Ecclestone to 97 million. F1 TV, the sport’s direct-to-consumer streaming platform, grew 15 per cent in 2024 alone. Fan attendance at races hit 6.5 million in 2024, with average weekend crowds exceeding 270,000.

And then came the movie. In late June 2025, Apple released F1, starring Brad Pitt, which became both the biggest box office theatrical release for any streaming service and Pitt’s highest-grossing film ever, surpassing $545 million worldwide.

Where the Money Comes From Now

Formula 1’s $3.65 billion in 2024 revenue breaks down into three main streams, plus a growing “other” category.

Media rights are the largest single source, accounting for roughly 33 per cent of total revenue — around $1.2 billion. This includes traditional broadcast deals in over 180 countries, plus the growing F1 TV subscription platform. The big shift is that Liberty is moving toward a split model in some markets: non-exclusive broadcast deals to reach casual fans, combined with F1 TV as a premium product for enthusiasts. An upcoming Apple TV deal is expected to push media rights revenue significantly higher.

Race promotion fees account for about 29 per cent — roughly $1.07 billion. Each host country or city pays a fee to stage its Grand Prix. These fees vary widely: established European circuits like Silverstone or Monza pay less, while newer venues in the Middle East and Asia pay considerably more. The Las Vegas Grand Prix is unique — F1 owns and operates it directly, keeping all ticket, hospitality, and promotion revenue rather than collecting a flat fee. The 2025 calendar features 24 races, up from 19 in 2016.

Sponsorship contributes about 19 per cent — around $680 million at the F1 group level. This is the area of most dramatic growth. Under Ecclestone, global sponsorship was a relatively small-scale operation. Under Liberty, it has been transformed. The marquee deal is LVMH’s 10-year partnership starting in 2025, reported to be worth over $1 billion in total, with annual fees exceeding $100 million. TAG Heuer has replaced Rolex as the official timekeeper. Louis Vuitton now makes the trophy trunks. Moët Hennessy pours the champagne. Other major global sponsors include Aramco, Salesforce, DHL, Heineken, Pirelli, and Qatar Airways.

Other revenue — hospitality, licensing, merchandise, real estate — makes up the remainder and is growing fast. The Paddock Club corporate hospitality programme and F1’s expanding events business, including the Grand Prix Plaza in Las Vegas, contributed to this stream climbing from $132 million to $194 million in Q2 2025 alone.

On top of the F1 group’s revenue, the ten teams collectively generated $4.5 billion in their own revenue in 2024, primarily from team-level sponsorships and the prize money distributions they receive from F1. Teams shared $1.27 billion in prize money in 2024. Ferrari receives an additional bonus worth tens of millions because of its historical status as the only team to have competed in every F1 season since 1950.

Team-level sponsorship has become enormous in its own right. In 2024, the ten teams generated a record $2.04 billion in sponsorship revenue. McLaren recently signed Mastercard as a title sponsor in a deal reportedly worth $100 million annually. Williams landed Atlassian as its first title sponsor in five years. Technology companies now lead the charge, reflecting the sport’s appeal to a younger, more affluent, digitally engaged audience.

Why It’s So Valuable

The financial logic of F1’s explosion in value comes down to three things: scarcity, global reach, and cost controls.

Scarcity is the most powerful factor. There are only ten teams on the grid, soon to be eleven when Cadillac enters — and Cadillac paid a $450 million anti-dilution fee just for the right to join. You cannot simply start a new F1 team the way you might launch a new football club. The grid is capped. The entry barrier is immense. This creates the same dynamics that drive NFL and NBA franchise values skyward: limited supply plus growing demand equals rapidly inflating prices.

The numbers are staggering. The average F1 team is now worth $3.42 billion, up 48 per cent from 2024 and more than double the $1.61 billion average in 2023. The combined value of all ten teams exceeds $34 billion. F1’s average team valuation now surpasses MLB ($2.82 billion) and sits behind only the NFL ($7.13 billion) and NBA ($5.51 billion).

Global reach is the second factor. F1 races in 24 countries across five continents. Each race weekend draws an average of more than 60 million global TV viewers. The sport reaches 1.6 billion cumulative viewers annually. It operates in time zones from Melbourne to São Paulo, Abu Dhabi to Las Vegas. No other annual sporting competition matches this geographic spread. For sponsors — particularly luxury, technology, and energy brands seeking a global affluent audience — there is nothing else quite like it.

The cost cap, introduced in 2021, is the third factor. Teams are now limited to spending $135 million per season on car development and operations, excluding driver salaries and power unit costs. Before the cap, top teams routinely spent $400 million or more, and most teams lost money. The cap has made 70 per cent of the grid profitable. It has compressed the performance gap between the front and the back. And it has made F1 teams investable in a way they never were before, because investors can now model predictable costs against rising revenues.

McLaren is the poster child. In 2018, the team lost $137 million on $166 million in revenue. By 2024, after back-to-back constructors’ championships under CEO Zak Brown, the team turned a $76 million operating profit on $700 million in revenue. MSP Sports Capital, which invested in McLaren in 2020, recently exited at a reported $4.7 billion valuation — a tenfold return in five years.

Williams, bought by Dorilton Capital for roughly $200 million in 2020, is now valued at $2.14 billion. That is a ten-times increase in five years for what was then the grid’s worst team.

What Comes Next

The growth shows no signs of slowing. Liberty Media has also acquired MotoGP, the premier motorcycle racing series, which will sit alongside F1 under the Formula One Group. A new Concorde Agreement covering 2026 onwards is being finalised, which will reshape the revenue split between F1 and the teams. The Apple TV streaming deal, when it lands, is expected to significantly increase media rights income. Cadillac’s entry in 2026 — backed by General Motors — will add an 11th team and further expand F1’s US appeal. Audi is taking over the Sauber team the same year.

The fanbase has expanded to an estimated 826 million worldwide. The average age of 32 makes F1 younger than the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB audiences. The sport that Bernie Ecclestone built on handshake deals and secret TV contracts in smoky rooms has become, under Liberty Media, one of the most sophisticated sports entertainment businesses on earth.

Ecclestone, now 95, is watching from his coffee farm in Brazil. In 2025, he sold his legendary collection of 69 historic Grand Prix cars to Mark Mateschitz, the Red Bull heir, for a reported $650 million. The man who once said he had no interest in young fans or social media now watches a sport he created pull in billions from the very audiences he dismissed.

The irony is unmistakable. But so is the achievement. Nobody built F1 like Bernie. And nobody has grown it like the people who replaced him.

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