Toto Wolff on the big money in F1, part-owning Mercedes, and his plan to sell shares
The 51-year-old A📖ustrian i🍬s team principal and also owns 33 percent of Mercedes F1 (Sir Jim Ratcliffe, 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 in 2013, i💝t was a project,” he said 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 bac🐈k to Mercedes. That was agreed.
“Aft🧸er three years, it was good fun, everyone enjoyed the success, so we rolled it into another three years. But it was still a project.
“It was a bit like my lif☂e in venture capitalism and private equity: buy, invest, develop, sell, but always an exit.
“Then, in 2020, I came to the conclusion that this is what I like to do. I like the sporting side, an🌳d 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 entertain people.
“The real difficulty for media companies is to create content — and the most valuable content is sports. 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 visibility.
“You can compare the rise in the value of Mercedes F1 with the rise in the valu♍e of F1. Liberty bought the sport for $8 billion [£6.4 billion] in 2017 an꧟d it is valued today at $13-14 billion [£10.4b-£11.3b[, so profitability has increased massively.
“The key change was the 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:F1 cost cap introduced by Chase Carey [former executive chꦰairman] to protect us from ourselves.
“The situation before was that Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes were fightiꦬng in their own league in a revolving spending war, but the smaller teams were not comp🍸etitive.
“𓆏The cost cap was based on a blueprint that existed in the US for a long time. In the NFL and NBA, you have a limit to what you can spend on your roster.
“F1 introduced a cost cap on technical development, which was 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澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: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澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Lewis Hamilton capable of claiming an all-timꦓe record eighth title.
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sp🔴orts for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
