NASCAR purchase seems unlikely

Liberty Media execs downplay interest in buying franchise.

The last time a major auto-racing circuit was for sale, Braves owner Liberty Media bought it, paying $4.4 billion for Formula One in 2016.

So with this week’s news, first from Reuters, that the France family is working with investment bank Goldman Sachs to explore selling the family’s majority stake in Daytona Beach, Florida-based NASCAR, might Liberty Media again be a potential buyer?

How realistic?

At this point, it seems unlikely, based on comments of Liberty executives on a quarterly conference call with Wall Street analysts Wednesday.

“NASCAR is a fairly different franchise for us,” said Chase Carey, who runs Formula One for Liberty. “You look at the fan base, the regionalization of it in the U.S. is not really even a broadbased U.S. sport.

“Both race cars,” Carey said of Formula One and NASCAR. “I’m not sure beyond that there’s a lot that would really make it a natural fit for us. It would certainly give us scale in the U.S., and we could use that scale to build, but I think there probably are more differences than similarities. Our priority is really making Formula One everything it can be.”

What’s different

Formula One’s 21-race schedule this season is spread across the globe, with races in 21 countries on five continents. Eleven races are in Europe and one in the U.S.

Although Englewood, Colorado-based Liberty Media has previously expressed a desire to grow Formula One racing in the U.S., the company’s CEO, Greg Maffei, also sounded skeptical about a theoretical NASCAR deal.

NASCAR trouble

“I think it’s not as clear what the synergies are between the two assets, and I would note the trends have not been perfect in NASCAR,” Maffei said on Wednesday’s call. “Unless we had a good thesis on how and why we could fix them, it’s not an obvious to us.”

NASCAR’s recent trends have included a drop in television ratings, declining attendance revenue and the departure of some of its sponsors.

‘NASCAR is a fairly different franchise for us.’

— Chase Carey, who runs the Formula One racing circuit for Liberty Media.

Brian France is CEO and chairman of NASCAR.