Formula 1's new owners are likely to ditch the Concorde Agreement in favour of a franchise system post-2020, according to Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff.

The Concorde Agreement is the long-established contract teams, the FIA and other stakeholders sign with the commercial rights holder and binds the sport together, all teams must also sign this to be eligible for a slice of the sport's revenue.

However, under Liberty Media and new CEO Chase Carey, the agreement, which smaller teams have long criticised of being weighted too heavily in bigger teams favour due to the add-ons they receive, looks set to be abolished.

"In principle, a team in the future will have this 'franchise' forever, which helps to add value because you do not have to renegotiate every eight years," Wolff revealed to Austrian broadcaster ORF.

The move would also potentially put all the teams on a more level playing field financially or at least put smaller teams on a much stronger financial footing, something that has been firmly in the spotlight in recent years following the demise of three teams in a short period and a change of ownership at Lotus, which became Renault, and Sauber.

Force India has been one of the main drivers for a radical overhaul of the relationship between teams and F1 owners, with the franchise system a preferred choice.

"It takes years to build an F1 team," deputy team principal Bob Fernley has previously said. "Owners can come and go.

"What you need is the ability to create these teams and for owners to come in, enjoy them for a period of time, add value to them, or if they don’t do a good job, take a loss. And then be able to transfer them on.

"It’s the teams that are critical because it takes so long to build them. People buy teams because they are obviously fully functional, but it has to be formalised into a proper franchise system."

Recently there has been speculation of a new Chinese team joining the grid perhaps from 2019 and there is room for up to 13 what could become franchise spaces available from 2021.

The idea of American owners introducing a system that has prevailed in almost all the major sports in the States for decades is not surprising, the big challenge in introducing it, however, will come from whether the likes of Ferrari, who benefit the most from the current system are prepared to accept change.