Ferrari could lose the yearly $100 million bonus it gets from Formula 1 following Liberty Media Group’s formal takeover of the sport.
Ferrari, which has contended in every Formula 1 world champions since the series was founded in 1950, gets the $100 million bonus every year in addition to receiving more cash prize than contending teams for winning or scoring points. The team’s significance to F1 and the fans it draws in contribute to the compensation it gets, however Liberty Media is looking to make it simpler for F1’s midfield and backmarker teams to contend by giving them with more cash at the end of the season.
That money is most likely to come from Ferrari’s present reward fund, however Liberty says it might increase the quantity of money it gets by putting in much better performances and getting better sponsorship offers. It’s a tall order for the Scuderia observing as significant sponsorship for race teams can be difficult to come by nowadays. F1 is largely aired on pay-to-watch networks can make it difficult for teams to acquire big-ticket sponsorship offers as well, Forbes mentions.
Regardless of it, Liberty Media boss Greg Maffei thinks sponsorship will be the key to any financing issues Ferrari faces if its yearly lump sum were to diminish tremendously.
“If you’re Ferrari, you have enormous sponsorship revenue that goes directly to you. That’s going to be impacted more positively by great races. So thinking about balancing the team payments, so they’re a little more balanced and creates more fairness, has to be weighed, in Ferrari’s mind, I would expect, by the fact that creating a great platform helps our sponsorship revenue, too, so there’s give-and-take,” states Liberty’s CEO Greg Maffei.
No matter what takes place to Ferrari and its cash prize, it has a bit to sort things out. Ferrari is presently under contract to remain in F1 through to 2020 and written into it was the annual $100m bonus. We make sure we’re not the only ones who would be amazed if the Italian squad wasn’t still the greatest paid F1 team following its agreement renegotiation at the end of 2020.
