00:00 Host
My stock of the day for today, media mogul and Liberty Media chair, John Malone, still sees more upside in Formula 1 after 10 years of ownership. The position isn’t hard to argue. Liberty Media introduced Formula 1 racing to a US-based audience through races held in Miami and Las Vegas, and it branched it out to living rooms and smart devices courtesy of F1 TV and direct to consumer consumer streaming options. The Netflix series Drive to Survive also cemented its cult popularity on this side of the Atlantic. Apple’s mega-hit F1 movie this year starring Brad Pitt only added to the sports lore. Here’s what Malone told me about the future of F1 in a new opening bid on filter podcast drop.
00:54 John Malone
Look, 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. I mean, that’s the bottom line. But right now, it’s gangbusters and it’s it’s got essentially a reconstituted dream team for me.
01:31 Host
All right, still with me, my opening bid round table, Victoria Fernandez, Brooke De Palma, and Inez Ferre. Uh, Victoria, let me get over to you. The media landscape has been a disaster. Uh, Warner Brothers, uh splitting up, Comcast splitting up. But here’s Liberty Media, Victoria, that has a prized asset in Formula 1 and now it might near a a new streaming deal perhaps. Some of the rumors have been with with Apple. I mean, what a brand.
02:00 Victoria Fernandez
Yeah, look, F1 is just gaining popularity everywhere. I actually saw the movie on Friday, fantastic movie, so I would totally want to go see it. Yeah, it is. But you look at the demographic for F1 and it is growing. So I have a college-aged daughter, she and her roommates all watch F1. There was the Netflix series about the F1 drivers. So there’s all these elements that have really brought a lot of people in. The Dutch Grand Prix was yesterday or Sunday. I watched that when I was at home. So there’s a lot of elements to F1 movies, Netflix, watching the races, going to the races now that you have some here in the US, that I think are are really strong tailwinds uh for F1 and I think it’s just going to continue to grow, so it should be a star for Liberty Media going forward.
02:49 Host
All right, I I’m writing this down in real real time, Victoria. How do you play this? Do you play the F1 popularity through Netflix? Of course, they’re still streaming uh Drive to survive. Is it Liberty media that owns F1? Is it Goodyear tires for obvious reasons? Or is it a company like GM which is now getting into the sport via Cadillac?
03:10 Victoria Fernandez
Yeah, you know, that’s an interesting question because all of those elements should have a benefit from the popularity, but I think I would want to go back to the source, right? Liberty Media is not just F1. We know they’ve got Sirius XM, they’ve got all these other elements to them. But I think that’s where the source is and so that’s where I think I would probably look uh to put money to work if I was going to do an F1 bet, but I also think when you put streaming along with it, you can’t beat Netflix uh for a good investment related to those uh items either.
03:48 Host
And has somewhat related to this. Malone told me that he believes, and who am I to argue with John Malone? I mean this guy’s done everything over the course of 40, 50 years in the media industry, that big tech will dominate the future of media. Now we’re seeing it with Amazon and the NFL, but he called out Oracle, which is interesting. But at the end of the day, uh big tech has all the cash, uh legacy media doesn’t have all the cash.
04:21 Inez Ferre
Yeah, and look, I listened to that interview and I thought that that was the most important point that he made of the entire interview as well. Uh the fact that you have uh Big tech and you have streaming, he believes that there will be some sort of consolidation, at least that’s what he said in during the interview. But also talking about streaming and uh that social media is is merging with sort of with streaming and that uh you have a lot of people that are getting their news, their entertainment through, for example, YouTube, which has been absolutely huge. Um and then if you couple that with live sports, then you have a sort of blowout combination there. So, the fact that what he was talking about was Big tech with all these platforms, with all these users that are uh on social media that are getting their streaming from there, that are also getting their live sports from there as well. That’s pretty explosive when it comes to the entire industry.
05:40 Host
Inez, I did a 40-minute interview with the guy. That’s the only interesting point you found. I mean it’s like a real blow to my ego. I mean, you’re killing me here. You’re killing me.
05:47 Inez Ferre
No, no, no, no, no. His his entire story was was very impressive. And his father and and and what his father had worked on and everything. That was impressive, of course.
05:51 Host
Oh, there we go. All right.
05:52 Inez Ferre
But the future of media is what I’m talking about. Where we’re going in the future.
06:04 Host
Thank you, Inez.