According to Liberty Media’s president and CEO, Greg Maffei, Lewis Hamilton made a request to buy a MotoGP team.
The seven-time Formula One world champion made an attempt to purchase stock in Gresini Racing, according to a July report from GPOne.
That followed the announcement by Liberty Media, the owner of the F1 rights, that it intended to acquire 86% of MotoGP promoter Dorna Sports for over $6.3 billion (USD $4.2 billion), subject to regulatory clearances.
Hamilton’s interest was confirmed by Maffei, who spoke extensively on Wednesday at a Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference regarding Liberty Media’s position with regard to Formula 1 and MotoGP.
According to Maffei, Hamilton was one of many interested parties who wanted to be involved with MotoGP after seeing the success Formula 1 was having on a global scale.
“People like Lewis Hamilton called us as soon as we announced—this is a great example—and said, ‘I want to buy a team. Why? Since they want to emulate what happened in Formula 1, Maffei explained.
Major distributors have called them to express interest in getting involved. Regretfully, I had to inform them that while we would love to speak with you once we have EU approval, we really can’t talk about until then.
“I believe there’s a chance to capitalize on those adjustments you can make when you’re in a league,” Maffei continued.
“In general, teams don’t cash flow as well as they could. It’s not entirely accurate. NFL teams have a fairly healthy cash flow, but generally speaking, we’re still too traditional in our desire for that cash flow in addition to the much better, far easier, and more manageable ability to alter the dynamics, set the stage, and accomplish the things you want.
“It still takes time, but at the league level, you can accomplish things in a way that is very challenging at the team level.”
Through his Extreme E team X44, which folded earlier this year, Hamilton had interests outside of Formula One. He also has stock in the Denver Broncos, an NFL team.
It was disclosed in August that Liberty Media had raised $1.2 billion for the purchase of MotoGP by selling a portion of F1.
Maffei gave a favourable assessment of the financial status of MotoGP and Formula 1.
Over the past few years, Maffei said, “we have lowered the leverage of Formula 1, the parent company dramatically, partly through success and partly by generating cash flow to finance the $4.2 billion purchase of MotoGP.”
The remaining funds will be financed on our balance sheet; their balance sheet leverage will remain relatively low in comparison to the historical amounts that have been managed for both companies. We have raised just under $1 billion in equity money.
We’ll probably concentrate on cash flow management for a while. While we’ve already considered return on capital through equity repurchase, we’ll also keep an eye out for additional synergistic opportunities.
“We have paid back capital, and we do anticipate being bought back in the future. I don’t want our shareholders to believe that we’re abandoning what has been a Liberty Hallmark.
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