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Formula 1

Acquired

About this episode

Formula 1 is three competitions in one: a 200mph battle of the world's best race car drivers, the world cup of engineering where thousand-person teams spend hundreds of millions designing cars from scratch, and — as one of our listeners perfectly put it — the “Real Housewives of the Garage”, a soap opera of billionaire egos, team politics, and paddock drama that makes for incredible reality television. It's also the world's most popular annual sporting series with over 827 million fans globally — a fact that would shock most Americans, who until a recent viral Netflix series had barely heard of it.

Today we tell the story of how a chaotic, deadly, and gloriously dysfunctional European racing series became one of the greatest business stories in sports. For decades, brilliant engineers and daredevil drivers dedicated their lives (and too often lost them) to a league controlled for 45 years by a single man: a former London car dealer named Bernie Ecclestone, who centralized power and extracted billions, while also undeniably single-handedly making the sport successful. Then, in a move no one saw coming, the American company Liberty Media bought the whole thing in 2017, installed a team of Fox Sports and ESPN veterans, and did what Bernie never would — professionalized it. All of a sudden famously money-losing F1 teams turned into real businesses, with the average team valuation today clocking in at an astounding $3.6 billion. Buckle up for one of our most-requested episodes: the wild story of Formula 1.

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00:00:00 Start

00:00:37 Intro

00:05:52 Origins of F1: Britain, Italy, and Monaco

00:30:43 Bernie's Entrance

00:37:42 Bernie Consolidates Power

00:50:33 F1 as a Global TV Sport (Except America)

01:08:08 F1's Incredible Engineering Achievements

01:19:34 Senna's Crash and a New Era for Safety

01:33:18 The Many Owners of F1, and Bernie's Liquidity Drama

01:57:48 FOTA: The attempted breakaway series

02:05:07 RedBull, Mercedes, and Reinventing the Sport

02:42:33 Liberty Media buys F1 and Brings it to the Modern Era

03:05:03 Drive to Survive

03:26:45 Apple, TV Rights, and Success in America

03:41:52 F1: The Business Today

03:56:23 Analysis: Why Did F1 Work… and Was Bernie Necessary?

04:05:40 7 Powers

04:08:23 Bear vs. Bull Cases

04:16:32 Quintessence

04:20:08 Carve-Outs + Outro

‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.