While Formula 1 tries to ink new deals, change its regulations for 2021, re-sign existing race contracts and otherwise increase their revenue while reducing their expenses, its CEO, Chase Carey, has himself another role to play on top of his day job as the leader of the world’s most advanced form of motorsport.
On Tuesday, 21st Century Fox spun off its various television properties in preparation for a sale to Disney. The move has created Fox Corp. which is now publicly traded.
The new company has chosen its board members and Chase Carey is among those listed. The board will oversee Fox News Channel; Fox Business Network; two national Fox Sports channels, FS1 and FS2; the Fox Broadcasting network; and Fox’s group of television stations, including KTTV Channel 11 and KCOP Channel 13 in Los Angeles.
What it won’t oversee is the Formula 1 broadcast package which now resides with ESPN but one wonders if F1 TV and Fox will team up again like the old days when it was SPEED. Fox News generates more than $1 billion in annual profit so they’ve got some cash to do a deal with their very own board member, Carey, and solidify a unified approach the the US market.
Right now, ESPN snags Sky Sports backhaul and bounces it out to the US audience while F1 itself produces a streaming feed of the same content from Sky. Could Fox actually develop a more comprehensive approach to F1 with the production values of Fox’s team and the streaming components of both Fox and F1 TV? Could Will Buxton be wearing an F1/Fox logo on his polo shirt again?
There’s a part of me, selfish I admit, that says keep your hands off our bloody Chase because we need him to sort out the F1 debacle first before he starts considering the lilies in the Fox field.
Hat Tip: LA Times
Oh, good lord, why FOX? Now toxic politics will be brought into the picture, and that has no place in sports, much less F1. :P
For what it’s worth, Fox seems to keep a firewall between their hyperpolitical Fox News and their other properties. NFL games on Fox are just as apolitical as NFL games on NBC, CBS, or ESPN.
This is some toxic, um, stuff.
I’m hesitant to read too much into this. In the US, publicly traded companies are required to have majority of a board of directors come from outside the company. The idea is that they can bring a different perspective, and they would be outside of any group-think that might form within the company. The CEO of a sports league is obviously an important perspective to have on board of a company that broadcasts live sports. It would be unethical self-dealing and an obvious conflict-of-interest for him to use that position to negotiate a deal between the two companies. He would… Read more »