Who owns Formula 1?
Formula 1's commercial rights are owned by Liberty Media, an American media company chaired by the billionaire John Malone, which bought the sport in 2017 for around 4.4 billion dollars in equity. F1 is run as a publicly traded company, so it is owned by many shareholders rather than one person. The CEO of Formula 1 is Stefano Domenicali. The FIA, which makes the rules, and the ten teams are separate.
The short answer: Liberty Media
Formula 1's commercial rights are owned by Liberty Media, an American mass-media company associated with the billionaire John Malone.[1] Liberty bought the sport from a consortium led by the private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners in a deal completed in January 2017, valuing F1 at an enterprise value of around eight billion dollars and an equity value of about 4.4 billion.[1]
It is a public company, not one owner
F1 sits inside the Formula One Group, a tracking stock of Liberty Media that trades on the Nasdaq exchange, which means it is owned by many institutional and individual shareholders rather than a single billionaire.[1] John Malone, Liberty's chairman, is the figure most associated with control, but he does not personally own the sport.[3]
Who runs it
The person in charge of Formula 1 day to day is Stefano Domenicali, its president and chief executive since 2021, who has extended his role through 2029.[2] At the parent company, Derek Chang became chief executive of Liberty Media in 2025, after Greg Maffei stepped down at the end of 2024.[3]
:::analysis The distinction matters because "who owns F1" really has three answers. Liberty Media owns the commercial rights, the FIA governs the rules as a separate body, and each of the ten teams is its own business with its own owners. So no single billionaire owns Formula 1; the sport itself is shareholder-owned, even though several of the people around it, from Liberty's chairman to individual team owners like Lawrence Stroll, certainly are billionaires.
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Related reading
- [1]Liberty Media agrees to acquire Formula One (Liberty Media) (liberty-media). Accessed 2026-06-20.
- [2]Domenicali to continue as F1 CEO through 2029 (Formula1.com) (formula1). Accessed 2026-06-20.
- [3]Liberty Media names Derek Chang CEO (Liberty Media) (liberty-media). Accessed 2026-06-20.