F1 tipped for $30billion sale as former boss makes stunning prediction

Former Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei has claimed that F1 could be sold before the end of the decade with a mind-boggling valuation in play.

Liberty bought F1 back in January of 2017 in a move which valued the sport at around $8bn, and have overseen an explosion in popularity in that time, with the sport's share price rising by nearly 300 per cent in a decade.

The sport's non-voting stock most recently closed at $109.44, giving the company a market capitalisation in the region of $28bn.

Speaking at Sportico’s Invest New York 2026 conference earlier this week, Maffei backed the sport to be private and leave the stock market inside the next two years, tipping a massive sale.

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Former Liberty boss: The easy money's been made from F1

“I’ll say F1 is gone [from the stock market],” he said.

The businessman continued: “The easy money’s been made. The EBIDTA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) is up three times in eight or nine years. It’s not going to go up three times again in the next eight or nine years.”

On a possibly related note, Liberty Media founder and ex-chairman John Malone this week sold his 'high-vote' stock to Liberty, exchanging it for 'low-vote' stock - reducing his voting power from 48 per cent to three per cent - after a number of external offers were made to Malone for his shares and their voting power.

The move means that Liberty's board of directors hold all the relevant cards when it comes to controlling the sport. Should a big offer come in for F1, their responsibility would be to consider what's best for their shareholders - which could very well be a sale.

Malone said last year that F1 'has an exceptionally good economic structure' adding: "It's a public company. If somebody gets carried away, and they want to buy it, and they're willing to pay more for it than the board thinks that they can deliver to the shareholders, then we would sell it. That's the bottom line."

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