Liberty Media boss Greg Maffei says he will not pit the teams against each other as Bernie Ecclestone did to reach a new concorde agreement.
The famous Concorde agreement is normally renegotiated every six years and consists of the agreements made about what the sport will look like in the coming years on a commercial, financial and administrative level. Work is currently underway on the 2026 version, when the new technical regulations will come into force.
Over the past year, Formula One Management (FOM), the FIA and the teams have already worked hard on the new agreement and it is currently being finalized.
History has shown us that the previous F1 boss, Bernie Ecclestone, liked to use ‘divide and conquer’ tactics during negotiations. Greg Maffei of Liberty Media has already announced that he wants to use a different style and emphasizes the importance of working together.
“The previous regime really spent a lot of time getting the teams to compete against each other,” he said at an ‘F1 in Depth’ event in Monaco last week. “In many cases, they just enjoyed getting an edge on each other, rather than thinking about how we could grow the sport.”
“We have tried to follow the example of the NFL in the United States: compete hard on Sundays, but on Mondays the competition comes first. We really want to grow the sport together.”
“The teams have embraced that and benefited from it because not only have they seen growth in F1 revenues and their share of the profits in their own sponsorship, but we have also seen growth in the value of the teams.”
To explain the importance of collaboration, Maffei uses arguments such as the commercial growth that the sport has experienced in recent years and the positive effect that the budget ceiling has on the sport.
“When we got involved in late 2016 and made our first investment in January 2017, the bottom teams were literally worthless,” Maffei explains.
“Manor had been sold for one pound the summer before. And now there’s no team worth less than a billion dollars, maybe more, and they’re raising money at those amounts.”
“We have seen enormous growth in the value of the teams, just as we have seen growth in the value of F1.”
“But actually the value of the teams has probably increased more. And that was important: we needed an investment mentality and a mentality that these were franchises that could have real value. And that happened today.”
However, the American realizes that Liberty Media’s approach does not guarantee a smooth progress in the final phase of the negotiations.
“There are definitely things we’re going to argue about. And what a surprise: they want to make more money. I don’t begrudge them that,” he added.
“I suspect some of that could come out of our pockets. But overall, they appreciate that we’ve tried to take the long view and try to take the approach that we’re all better off together.”