Liberty Media tops ranking of most valuable sports empires

F1 and Liberty Media are doing well and one of the recent Forbes magazine rankings confirms this. Owner of the commercial rights of the Formula 1 since 2017, the American group has continued to grow year after year, as evidenced by the figures presented by the American economic magazine.

Among the various rankings concerning the world of sport that it produces, Forbes has ranked Liberty Media at the top of that of “25 most valuable sports empires” in the world. According to the specialized media, the value of the group that owns F1 is estimated at 21 billion dollars, or a little more than 18,3 billion euros.

Constant growth which attracts a lot of attention, particularly in the Middle East. Recently, the American news agency Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia, via its public investment fund PIF (Public Investment Fund), was interested in buying the commercial rights to F1. The figure of 20 billion dollars had even been mentioned but the offer was not accepted by Liberty Media, not inclined to sell.

Liberty Media, from F1 but not only

At Liberty Media, Formula 1 is obviously the most lucrative activity but the group founded by John Carl Malone in 1991 is also interested in other areas such as baseball. He owns the MLB (American championship) franchise of the Atlanta Braves estimated at 2,1 billion dollars (approximately 1,9 billion euros) compared to 17,1 billion dollars (approximately 15,7 billion euros). euros) for F1.

The remaining 600 million euros of the value of Liberty Media are distributed among different structures in the sports universe across the Atlantic. But all of these are owned 50% or less by the company headed by Gregory Maffei, the president and CEO. Among the list we find the American team Meyer Shank Racing, entered in IndyCar et IMSA where it won the last two editions of the 24 Hours of Daytona, the sports and entertainment holding company Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, the Drone Racing League and Overtime Sports, a sports media company aimed at Generation Z fans through social networks .

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