Toto Wolff on the big money in F1, part-owning Mercedes, and his plan to sell shares
The 51-year-old Austrian is team principal and also owns 33 percent of Mercedes F1 (Sir Jim Ratcli♔ffe, Britain’s richest man, owns another 33 percent via his company INEOS, and Daimler, who own Mercedes-💞Benz, have 33 percent).
“When I started at Mercedes inღ 2013, it was a project,” he s🔜aid to .
“It was clear ♔I am signing a three-year contract. I am team principal and 30 per cent shareholder [at the time] and when the project is done, I shall sell the shares back to Mercedes. That was agreed.
“After three years, it was g🦩ood fun, everyone enjoyed the success, so we r༒olled it into another three years. But it was still a project.
“It was a bit like my life in venture capitalism and private equity: buy, invest, develop, se♉ll, but always an exit.
“Then, in 2020, I came tꦺo the conclusion that this is whaꦗt I like to do. I like the sporting side, and I love the business side.
“And what we learnt during Covid is that content companies are crisis resilient. If you are able to put on a show, and broadcast it, it will entert🧜ain people.
“The real difficulty for media companies is to create content — and the most valuable content is sport🎉s. Variations of sports teams — NBA, NFL, soccer in Europe and now F1 — are limited franchises that are very difficult to replicate with a high entry-level barrier, because you have to invest a lot before you can become competitive and generate visibilit♕y.
“You can compare the ri⛎se in the value of Mercedes F1 with the rise in the value of F1. Liberty bought the sport for $8 billion [£6.4 billion] in 2017 and it is valued today at $13-14 billion [£10.4b-£11.3b[, so profitability has increased massively.&nb𒅌sp;
“The key change was the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:F1 cost cap in𝄹troduced by Chase Carey [former executive chairman] to protect us from ourselves.
“The situation before was that Red ⛦Bull, Ferrari and Mer🍸cedes were fighting in their own league in a revolving spending war, but the smaller teams were not competitive.
“The cost cap was based on a blueprint that existed in the US for a long time. In the NFL and NBA, y𓂃ou have a limit to what you can spend on your roster.
“F1 introduced a cost cap on technical developmentཧ, which wඣas the game changer for the business side of F1. Suddenly, we were profitable.”
Wolff and Mercedes’ big rivals, Red Bull, notoriously broke the 2021 cost cap in a scandal which engulfed 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Max Verstappen’s second consecutive championship win.
Red Bull were hit with a $7m fine plus reduced wind tunnel time for the 2023 season, when Wolff aims to deliver a car to 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Lewis Hamilton capable of claiming an all-tim🐟e recꦕord eighth title.
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade cover༺ing everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
