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Preparing your Formula Dream journey
The FIA owns the championship. Liberty Media owns the right to make money from it, on a lease that runs to 2110. The split explains most arguments in the sport.
Formula 1 has two owners, and confusing them is the source of most misunderstandings about how the sport works.
The FIA owns the Formula 1 World Championship. It is the governing body, it writes the rules and it runs the racing.
Liberty Media owns the commercial rights, which it bought in January 2017 in a deal valuing Formula 1 at about $8 billion including debt, under an agreement that runs for 100 years, to 2110
Whoever owns it, the sport still sounds like twenty drivers on the radio. The last race is in our Spanish Grand Prix 2026 race radio archive.
So the FIA owns the sport and Liberty owns the business. Nobody involved has to agree with the other about anything except what the contract says, which is why so many disputes in F1 end up being about governance rather than racing.
The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile is the governing body for world motorsport, not a Formula 1 company. F1 is one of many championships it sanctions.
Nobody owns the FIA in the usual sense. It is a non-profit association, founded in 1904 and based in Paris, that brings together 244 motoring and sporting organisations from 146 countries, and those members elect its president. Mohammed Ben Sulayem was re-elected in December 2025 for a second term, running to 2029.
Its authority covers:
What it does not have is a financial stake in the commercial income. It sold that.
Liberty Media is a US company, and today its business is motorsport. It bought 84% of Dorna Sports, the owner of MotoGP's commercial rights, in July 2025, and in December 2025 it split off its other holdings, leaving Formula 1 and MotoGP. Through Formula 1 it holds the commercial rights, which is the right to make money from the championship.
That covers:
The most consequential part for the teams is that Liberty controls the revenue that gets shared out. How much reaches a team, and on what basis, is covered in how F1 prize money works.
The split is not a modern invention. It dates to Bernie Ecclestone.
Ecclestone set up Formula One Promotions and Administration in 1987, when the second Concorde Agreement was signed, to manage the sport's television rights. It later became Formula One Management. The essential move, over years, was to consolidate the sport's scattered commercial arrangements into one entity, and then to secure the commercial rights from the FIA on a long lease.
That lease was agreed on 28 June 2000, when the FIA's member clubs voted in Geneva to grant the commercial rights for 100 years, to 2110, for a reported $360 million.
That lease is why Liberty's position is so secure. Buying F1 in 2017 was not buying the championship, it was buying a contract with 93 years still to run.
The FIA, the commercial rights holder and the teams are held together by the Concorde Agreement, a confidential contract that sets out who makes the rules, how revenue is divided, and what the teams commit to in return.
The current version, signed by all the teams, runs from 2026 to 2030. It is the reason F1 governance moves slowly. A change of any significance needs agreement across three parties with genuinely different interests: a regulator concerned with safety and sporting integrity, a commercial owner concerned with audience and revenue, and ten or eleven teams concerned with their own competitiveness. The detail is in the Concorde Agreement explained.
Once you know who owns what, several recurring stories make more sense.
Why the calendar keeps growing and moving. Race hosting is a commercial decision, not a sporting one. New venues appear where promoters will pay, which is a Liberty judgement about audience and revenue.
Why rule changes take years. Regulations are an FIA matter, but they affect the commercial product, and both sides plus the teams have to sign up. Nobody can simply impose a change.
Why a new team is so hard to add. An eleventh entry dilutes the revenue share, which is a commercial question for the existing teams, and it needs a sporting approval too. That is why Cadillac's arrival for 2026 came with a reported $450 million anti-dilution fee, shared between the ten existing teams, as explained in how F1 teams make money.
Why the FIA publishes so much. Its authority is regulatory, and regulatory authority depends on being seen to apply rules consistently, which is why every stewards' decision arrives as a public document.
Separately again. The teams are their own businesses with their own owners: manufacturers like Ferrari and Mercedes, energy drinks companies, private investors, and now General Motors through Cadillac.
Owning a team gives you no ownership of the championship and no share of the commercial rights beyond what the Concorde Agreement allocates. It buys you a seat at the table, not the table.
The regulator's decisions, the commercial product and the racing itself all arrive in the same place: the weekend.
The Formula Dream app runs a live Dashboard through every session, with every car on the circuit map and a timing tower carrying lap times, gaps, intervals, tyre compound and age, plus flag and safety car alerts as race control calls them. It also collects every FIA document of the weekend as it is published, which is the governing body's side of this arrangement in raw form, and carries live driver radio as it is broadcast.
Free, no subscription, no ads, independent. Not affiliated with Formula 1.
Two organisations own different things. The FIA owns the Formula 1 World Championship as its governing body, and Liberty Media owns the commercial rights, which it bought in 2017 in a deal valuing F1 at about $8 billion, under an agreement running to 2110.
The FIA writes the technical and sporting regulations, runs race control and the stewards, and handles safety and licensing. Liberty Media promotes the races, sells the broadcasting rights, licenses the brand and manages championship sponsorship.
The deal, completed on 23 January 2017, valued Formula 1 at about $8 billion including debt, and about $4.4 billion in equity. Liberty paid $4.7 billion at closing, in cash and new shares. It bought the company holding the commercial rights, not the championship itself.
No one, in the usual sense. The FIA is a non-profit association of 244 motoring and sporting organisations from 146 countries, and those members elect its president. Mohammed Ben Sulayem was re-elected in December 2025 for a second term to 2029.
Yes. Liberty Media completed its purchase of 84% of Dorna Sports, the commercial rights holder of MotoGP, on 3 July 2025. Dorna's management kept the other 16%.
Not from the commercial rights, which it sold. Its role is regulatory, and its income comes from elsewhere, including entry fees and the wider motorsport activities it governs.
Liberty Media, as the commercial rights holder, negotiates with circuit promoters over hosting. The FIA must approve a circuit's safety and homologation, but the choice of venue is a commercial decision.
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Five Miami Grands Prix have been held since 2022, and only one was won from pole: Kimi Antonelli's in 2026. Max Verstappen won from ninth in 2023, and Lando Norris took his first win there in 2024. Every winner, grid slot and safety car, measured.
