Liberty Media announced it would be selling an $825million stake in Formula 1 to bankroll the acquisition of MotoGP. It’s an interesting move as F1 announced last April it would be acquiring 86% of Dorna, the owners of MotoGP since 1992, for $4.2 billion.
“Liberty Media Corporation announced today that it has priced the previously-announced public offering of 10,650,000 shares of its Series C Liberty Formula One Common Stock (“FWONK”) at a public offering price of $77.50 per share. Liberty Media also granted the underwriter of the offering an option to purchase up to an additional 1,597,500 FWONK shares.
“The offering is expected to close on August 22, 2024, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, and is expected to result in approximately $825,375,000 in gross proceeds to Liberty Media, before deducting the underwriter’s discounts and estimated offering expenses payable by Liberty Media.
“Liberty Media intends to exercise its option to deliver additional cash in lieu of shares of FWONK as part of its previously disclosed proposed acquisition (the “Acquisition”) of Dorna Sports, S.L., such that all the consideration paid will be comprised of cash and no shares of FWONK will be issued to the sellers.”
So no shares to Dorna for the sale, just cash. It obviously isn’t an asset-only acquisition as some debts appear to be in the acquisition as well.
According to Greg Maffei, Liberty Media President and CEO, they are excited about acquiring MotoGp and believe it has tremendous upside potential. So a Drive to Survive treatment for MotoGP in the hopes they can find their own two-wheel version of Guenther Steiner? Ok, maybe not. I’d suggest they have big plans to make MotoGP a larger sport than just Spain and Italy.
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