$1Billion of Debt Eliminated According to Chase Carey

From April 2017 to June 2017, Formula One had cashed in a 3% revenue increase. But with events like F1 Live in London, another $45m to $90m was spent. An initial offering of shares worth 12.9 million helped repay a second term loan. F1 CEO Chase Carey said that they have “successfully eliminated an expensive $1bn tier” of debt. According to him, Liberty Media had repriced their remaining debt.

“The combined effects will be to reduce annual interest expense by up to $90m going forward.” Carey admitted that further expenditure in recruiting senior staff would increase but would become more ‘refined’ by the end of the year. “The corporate head count has been sort of 70-75, and it has probably about doubled,” said Carey. “We’re still building it out.We’ve hired most of the senior executives, but we haven’t built the team out fully.”

He also said that they have invested in supporting a digital platform for F1 to move forward. Liberty also confirmed that Carey’s salary was directly proportionate to the success of Formula One.”The substantial majority of Chase’s compensation is performance related, and tied into the operational performance at F1 directly, or the stock of the F1 Group,” said Liberty boss Greg Maffei.