Formula 1 owners Liberty Media showed a keen interest in buying IndyCar earlier this year, separate reports are suggesting.
The American company bought the commercial rights to F1 back in 2016 for $4.4bn before completing their takeover in early 2017 with current F1 CEO Chase Carey replacing long-standing boss Bernie Ecclestone.
Since then, Liberty has been working to modernise the business structure and is negotiating the overhaul in regulations for 2021, but, talking to investors, chief executive Greg Maffei also put forward the idea of “potentially expanding Formula 1 into other motorsports”.
“That could be interesting,” Forbes quoted him as saying. “Ones where we have synergies. Ones where we are starting to get some insights.
“There are emerging sports that could be considered as well, starting with motorsports would be the most natural but that’s not to say there’s nothing else that could work.”
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So where does the IndyCar link come in? Well, recently Penske Corporation completed a takeover of the American series as well as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and this, Auto Motor und Sport claimed, came after Liberty backed out of bidding war.
“One person familiar with Liberty’s talks said the company baulked at an initial asking price of $250 million,” the AP also reported.
Perhaps adding further credence to the claims is how Sky Sports in the UK added IndyCar coverage to their F1 channel as a huge new broadcast deal went into effect.
Though nothing ultimately came of it, Liberty is also not giving up, with Forbes continuing comments by Maffei to investors.
“We continue to look for M&A (mergers and acquisitions) and synergistic investments,” he said.
“We think there are things we can do. We like the live event area. We like the sports area. There are things that are synergistic with Formula 1. We bid on a bunch of assets.
“Unfortunately prices remain high,” he admitted, “We will see but there are things we think we will do over the next four years in this space and we will certainly try.”
