Zak Brown: McLaren’s $5bn marker isn’t the ceiling for F1 team values
McLaren’s latest deal didn’t just move the needle — it snapped it clean off. The team’s minority stake sale earlier this month, which saw MSP Sports Capital exit and consolidated ownership under Bahrain’s Mumtalakat and Abu Dhabi’s CYVN Holdings, valued McLaren Racing at north of £3.74 billion (around $5 billion). That’s a record-setting institutional number for a racing outfit, and, if you believe Zak Brown, still not the top of the market.
“Every time there’s a record deal… everyone goes ‘oh, that was crazy’. And then you look back in five years, they’ve still gone up,” McLaren’s CEO told Bloomberg. “I think our sport in particular has a lot of room for growth.”
He’s not exactly on an island with that view. The combination of Liberty Media’s governance, the cost cap, and a flatter prize-money split has turned F1 teams from passion projects with leaky balance sheets into trophy assets — scarce, investable, and increasingly profitable. McLaren’s jump is the headline proof: Sportico pegged its value at $2.65bn in 2024; now, insiders put the true figure of this month’s deal nearly a quarter higher than some early reports, to roughly $5bn.
MSP’s timeline tells the story. The group took an initial 15% stake in 2020, later grew it to a third, and has now cashed out at a valuation that’s roughly ten times higher than when McLaren was priced around £560m. Whatever your view of the current froth, that’s the kind of return that makes boardrooms sit up.
Brown’s broader pitch is simple: demand outstrips supply almost everywhere you look. F1’s calendar sits at 24 rounds in 2025, yet promoters keep knocking — “we have demand for probably 30 grands prix,” he said — while the grandstands and hospitality suites remain full. Sponsors aren’t shy either. McLaren’s roster includes global heavyweights like Mastercard and Google, and there’s a prevailing sense that the sport’s reach still has headroom.
On track, the product’s been doing its part. “Last year, four teams won, seven different drivers won multiple races – first time I’ve seen that in my 30 years following the sport,” Brown noted. Maybe you credit regulations for compressing the field, or maybe you just enjoy the fights. Either way, a competitive front end is gold for broadcast, and Netflix keeps feeding the off-track narrative that pulls in casuals and converts them into Sunday lifers.
The old F1 was survival mode. The modern version is a viable business. Teams at the back aren’t clinging on for dear life; they’re budgeting, investing and, in many cases, posting a profit. Combine that with a fixed grid of 10, a cost cap that keeps a lid on runaway spending, and a global calendar that hits every growth market you’d want, and you get a classic scarcity story. There are only so many of these things — and everyone wants one.
That doesn’t mean the trajectory is guaranteed forever. Markets cool, cycles turn. But in the near term, the ingredients are obvious: more eyeballs, stronger sponsors, stable governance, and billionaire-backed owners who aren’t forced sellers. As Brown puts it, “The fans are coming out in the tens and hundreds of millions… sponsors [are] in the sport unlike we’ve ever seen before. The sport is on fire, and long may it continue.”
For McLaren, the $5bn inflection point acts as both validation and signal. Validation of its turnaround as a racing and commercial power, and signal to the rest of the grid — and to would-be entrants — that the price of admission keeps going up. In F1’s current economy, buying a team isn’t just buying lap time. It’s buying into a franchise. And those don’t trade cheap.
