14/11/2018
NEWS STORY
While the future of the British Grand Prix is already in doubt - there being no contract after 2019 - a number of other events are also in danger, not least Interlagos host of last weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix.
Speaking today at Liberty's Annual General Meeting, F1 boss Chase Carey offered little hope for Silverstone, Interlagos or a number of other circuits, such as Monza, known to be struggling to meet the ever increasing hosting fees.
Indeed, as the sport welcomes the likes of Vietnam, Carey warned that Liberty Media's intention to expand the sport will be at the cost of existing races.
"We expect to expand our calendar beyond our current 21 race schedule," he said. "Expansion will be modest but we have been excited by the number, quality and diversity of new locations interested in hosting a race.
"We expect to replace a few existing races where we inherited unattractive agreements with new events or agreements that are better for racing and provide more value," he added."
Under intense pressure from financial journalists at last week's investors press conference, Carey admitted that a fall in the sport's stock price had been fuelled by a number of issues, not least the failure to agree a new Concorde Agreement committing the teams to the sport, the current agreement ending in 2020.
While he seeks to get the teams to sign up to this, a tough call in light of the teams' different opinions of the budget cap and change to the prize money allocation, Carey also admitted to looking to increase the prize pot by not only increasing the number of races but introducing more sponsors.
"We have previously identified sponsorships as the area where we expect to make the most headway by 2020 and that continues to be true," he said.
"All in all our sponsorship efforts are more time consuming than initially expected but we are encouraged by the enthusiasm and our efforts are starting to bear fruit."
"We expect to begin to drive bottom line growth in 2019 and that will continue into 2020 and beyond," he insists, though financial analysts remain sceptical.
As it stands, no less than nine races have their contracts come to an end before 2020. However, since, according to Formula Money, they bring in an annual estimated total of $226.6m, surely Carey and Co would be best advised keeping them on board before seeking pastures new.