F1’s future could be even more lucrative than it is now for all its stakeholders, with the sale of the series expected later this year, Haas F1 Team Owner Gene Haas said. Recent reports suggested Liberty Media Corp., backed by U.S. billionaire John Malone, is in discussions with CVC Capital Partners, F1’s controlling stakeholders, regarding an $8.5B takeover. Haas, whose F1 team joined the series this season, told SBD Global the potential sale of the sport to a global media company could be incredibly helpful in reaching new audiences and generating value. “In this day and age of Google, where you deliver a specific viewer for a specific price -- maybe only for a few pennies at a click -- that’s proven to be very valuable,” he said. “There might not be 2 billion people that want to watch Formula 1, but if they can find that specific set of people -- even 1 or 2 percent of the 7 billion population -- and deliver that and charge $1 per viewer, the numbers become just outrageous in how much value you would get out of that.”
CHANGE ON THE HORIZON: The series is already highly profitable, having been able to increase its profits to $329.9M last year on revenue of $1.7B. Despite those figures, the old model, pioneered by F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone -- of selling rights to an individual company at the highest price -- may have run its course, Haas said. “You have to take a broad view,” he said. “How do we reach all those billions of people, so that you not necessarily make a tremendous amount of money, but you make a little bit of money out of millions of people?” F1's viewership has declined by one third to more than 400 million annually since '08. However, racing content remains very desirable for broadcasters, which was proven by Sky’s $125M-per-year deal to show the series from ’19. The biggest challenge for media companies will be reaching their audiences, Haas said. “It’s one thing to have a market, but it’s a whole other thing to get to those different people,” he said. “[But] having something that people will watch is a very valuable commodity.” F1 has put an increased effort on social and digital media activities over the past two seasons after failing to realize early on that this is the way to connect and interact with young fans. “In general, racing is looking for new outlets and new ways of reaching new customers,” Haas said.
