F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

F1 sponsors have gone all in at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, and you will get plenty of examples in this week’s Business of Motorsport Roundup. I also cover the latest on the potential future of Liberty Media, why Roger Penske bought the Long Beach Grand Prix and MotoGP’s new look. All this plus the latest sponsorship deals, partnership news and global race team plans for 2025.

Motorsport Industry News

Formula 1

Greg Maffei CEO Liberty Media

One of the items in last week’s column was the retirement of Liberty Media CEO Greg Mafei but he insists that he isn’t exactly leaving the fold as Sports Business Journal reports. “I’m not exactly leaving all the fold by any means,” Maffei said during a Q&A. “John has been kind enough to let me continue to have the role with TripAdvisor, Qurate but also with LiveNation and with Charter, at least on those boards for a while. So, I’m not quite removed yet.”

As for Liberty Media itself, Maxim does a good job of examining the rise of the corporate behemoth while the company could be looking at other sports besides new acquisition MotoGP according to Front Office Sports.

“Liberty Media chair and interim CEO John Malone, signaling potential motorsports acquisitions to add to the company’s existing ownership of Formula One and a pending deal for MotoGP. Malone made the comment at an investor meeting held Thursday in New York, and the session arrived one day after Liberty announced a series of significant corporate shifts, including the forthcoming exit of longtime CEO Greg Maffei, and the restructuring of other parts of the company. The 83-year-old Malone added he will be a “transitional” CEO as Liberty moves to its new structure that “may not be in the media business.””

And what about that Andretti Global bid? SpeedCafe lays out the current state of speculation about the departure of Maffei and the arrival of a new United States administration could mean.

“Whether a change in position over Andretti now would placate those concerns is unclear, but it would draw a convenient line in the sand; it could be argued that the decisions taken under Maffei were not reflective of the new-look Liberty Media, no matter how accurate (or otherwise) that statement might be.”

Audi's F1 Project

The potential of the FIA giving Audi cost cap salary breaks because they are based in Switzerland is not going well with the other F1 teams.

“Why does a team based in Switzerland have an exemption? Everybody chooses where to set up the team. Between London and Oxford and north of England, prices are different,” Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu said. “So where do you stop? Where you draw the line? And if you look at those things, you have to look at all the social benefits and everything, and also [for] people to live in Switzerland, the reasoning can be different, right?”

Read more about his concerns in Autosport here.

LVMH

Mark Gallagher of Autosport Plus reflects on why the 10-year deal LMVH has signed with Formula 1 makes such good sense.

“The deal, the financial details of which are known only to people inside the LVMH and Formula One Groups, is significant in both scale and term. A decade is a long time. In a world where most companies struggle with a three-year plan and five-year targets feel remote, it’s a sure sign of LVMH’s confidence in both itself and Liberty’s plans for F1 that such an agreement can be countenanced.”

Read more here (subscription required).

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

Amid its remarkable growth and widespread acclaim, Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has declared the series to be the world’s leading sports entertainment property.

“F1 will be the protagonist of the life of the people who will be there in 30 years because all the ingredients are there, the ingredients of connected people, the ingredients of the right technology to develop as an accelerator, the ingredients of talking of something that is sport, but [also] business and entertainment. At the end of the day, today, I can say that F1 is the biggest sport entertainment in the world and this is for sure what it will be in 30 years.”

Finally accepting the inevitable, the organizers of the Canadian Grand Prix have agreed to move their race to the third or fourth weekend of May each year starting in 2026 in the interests of rationalizing the calendar.

The move will allow the European leg of the season to be consolidated into one consecutive period over the European summer months and is planned to remove an additional transatlantic crossing by the Formula 1 community each year, with significant associated carbon reductions.

Autosport has more details.

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

Joe Pompliano of Huddle Up looks at Ferrari’s unique business model that leads to record financial performance.

“Ferrari built its brand through emotion. Enzo Ferrari spent decades almost exclusively obsessing over the performance of his Scuderia Ferrari racing team because he knew that if they built fast cars and won races, Formula 1 would provide him with a big enough platform to organically build fandom and eventually sell cars.”

You can read more of Joe’s analysis here.

With the meteoric rise of Argentinian driver Franco Colapinto, Autosport reports that Argentina has taken its first tentative steps towards a return of its Formula 1 grand prix in Buenos Aires but will have several hurdles to overcome to get there.

“The dream is for the Argentinian Grand Prix to return to the calendar at the same circuit that last hosted the event, the Autodromo Oscar y Juan Galvez initially built in the 1950s, ideally incorporating part of its longer original loop so modern F1 cars can stretch their legs, rather than the cramped and unpopular layout used in the 1990s.”

Read more at Autosport.

Another week and yet another FIA departure. This week it was Paolo Basarri who has left his position as the compliance officer of Formula 1’s governing body according to the BBC. “Multiple sources, both at and close to the FIA, said the Italian had been fired as a consequence of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem losing confidence in him.”

Meanwhile, with all these departures, the drivers are starting to lose confidence in the regulatory body. “There’s obviously a huge amount of change within the FIA quite regularly. So it’s clearly not the most stable of places and maybe that’s why it’s been a bit challenging to get some of the changes we’ve wanted implemented.”

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

The Las Vegas Grand Prix is getting ready for the sophomore race and they have made it clear that they have learned from the experience of last year and have made some modifications to their approach in year two. While they are projecting slightly less ticket sales than year one, sponsors are all over the Grand Prix with new team partnerships, activations and publicity.

“We have strengthened a lot of the relationships we had last year,” said Emily Prazer, the Chief Commercial Officer of Las Vegas Grand Prix, Inc. “Interestingly, the teams have gathered much stronger relationships with the partners in this market. We have been looking at how we impact this ecosystem.”

Here is a roundup of some of the coverage of the race and all the accompanying hype and history.

General Motorsport Industry News

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

MotoGP has unveiled a new logo as their transformation to becoming a Liberty Media property begins in earnest. Moving forward, the motorcycle series will utilize a unique slogan, which coincides with the series’ boldness, “Faster. Forward. Fearless.”

But what exactly is Liberty Media buying? BlackBook Motorsport takes a look. “Controlling the two biggest global motorsport championships is an unprecedented position for one company – CVC Capital Partners was forced to sell MotoGP when in a similar position in 2006 – so it will be interesting to see whether MotoGP can follow Formula One’s lead in making a meaningful impact in the US market.”

Read more at BlackBook Motorsport here.

The Sports Rush looks at how Roger Penske’s purchase of the Long Beach Grand Prix was a shrewd move in preventing NASCAR or F1 from grabbing the second most popular IndyCar race on the calendar.

“Jim Michaelian, president and CEO of Long Beach, tells me “Per our City contract Grand Prix can only run one 3-day race event per year.” So unless NASCAR or F1 wants to share the IndyCar weekend, Penske just locked down Long Beach for his series.”

Read more at here.

The FIA World Endurance Championship 2025 entry list is expected soon but as RACER points out, there has been substantial turnover already because of the substantial rise in the cost to go racing in the class over the past 12 months.

“The shift to air freight (following the delays in Qatar) has driven the logistical costs for teams rise by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Additional marketing fees for the use of onboard cameras are now in place for the teams, too, and the costs associated with installing new 2025 number/information panels to cars represent another new line on the spreadsheet. And that’s without considering the general increase in travel and catering expenses. It’s all adding up. Key sources have revealed that the cost of going racing in LMGT3 in 2025 is likely to exceed the $5 million mark per car for many teams.”

Read more on RACER here.

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

Susie Wolff is certain that F1 Academy will one day stand on its own two feet as a symbol that motorsport is no longer exclusively a man’s world.

“I’m a great believer anyway that women’s sport has to come, at some point, into an area where it will be self-sufficient, that it will create the return on investment. I absolutely believe that at some point we need to become self-sufficient and there needs to be a return on investment to F1 that warrants their investment in the series. In the end, what we’re trying to do is not just create more opportunity for female drivers on track and female talent off track.”

Read more at Autosport here.

Quick Takes on the Business of Motorsport This Week

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
Midwest Late Model Racing Ass’n
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

Highlights from the Sustainable Motorsport Roundup

Canadian Grand Prix

The Canadian Grand Prix has been rescheduled to earlier in May for 2026 as part of Formula 1’s switch to a more geography-based calendar and I have the details this week. I also have an article that looks at Formula 1’s influence in the location of COP29, a new podcast from Hansen Motorsport and a massive technical step forward for Formula E. All this and more in this week’s Sustainable Motorsport Roundup.

Motorsport Law Roundup

Michael Jordan NASCAR lawsuit

While 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports have asked for their appeal of the preliminary injunction ruling to be dismissed, in a move that suggests a settlement is the most likely outcome in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit, the parties have reached an agreement that allows the two teams to compete as open teams while their litigation continues, according to Sportico.

“The two teams’ attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, announced Saturday that the arrangement permits 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports to sign contracts as open teams—instead of chartered teams—without having to accept a clause that would contractually relinquish their antitrust claims. Such a clause would likely forfeit their case since their claims invoke antitrust law.”

Motorsport Sponsorship & Partnership News

Here are the latest motorsport sponsorship deals, partnerships and related analysis that were announced this week

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

The Business of Running a Race Team

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

Restart Racing’s main aim for its first 12 months in the UK’s tin-top elite was to get established. Its main players explain how that happened to Autosport Plus.

“It was the realisation of a dream that Smiley and engineer Ben Taylor, who had worked together with Taylor’s father Bert at BTC Racing, had harboured since they exited the series at the end of 2021 when the Northern Irish racer’s two-year stint with Excelr8 came to a close. They regrouped in 2022 in TCR UK under the banner of Restart, won the title with Honda’s trusty Civic Type R FK7, then had a trickier 2023 developing the new FL5 model.”

Team & Manufacturer News

Here is a roundup of the latest team news from around the world of motorsport

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix
F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

Motorsport Movers & Shakers

F1 Sponsors Go All In At Las Vegas Grand Prix

He won GP titles with Benetton, Ferrari and his own Brawn team, then helped steer F1 to unprecedented popularity. As Ross Brawn turns 70, Matt Bishop of Motorsport Magazine looks back at a remarkable career, plus the multiple times he antagonised the engineer

“Over the course of that long career he has not been a stranger to controversy, a result of his ferocious determination to win and his early adoption of what is now a modus operandi de rigueur in F1, if you will excuse my mixing a Latin tag with a French one, namely the realisation that what is important when it comes to adherence to technical regulations is not the spirit of them, nor even the letter of them, but the way in which they are enforced.”

Read the complete profile here.

Nico Rosberg

Nico Rosberg, the 39-year-old racing legend’s fame gets him in the door with the world’s top investment firms. Now he’s betting that access can pay off for wealthy Europeans looking for a way into Silicon Valley. Read more here: How F1 Champion Nico Rosberg Scored $100 Million For A New VC Fund (Forbes)

Mark Boudreau
Author: Mark Boudreau

Mark is the publisher of Motorsport Prospects. As a former lawyer, he applies his legal background and research skills to assist race drivers by showcasing the resources they need to make their motorsport careers happen.