McLaren’s rulers close in: Bahrain and Abu Dhabi set to take full control in £3bn deal
McLaren’s resurgence has been impressive on track. Off it, the numbers are starting to look even punchier.
Mumtalakat and CYVN — the Bahrain and Abu Dhabi-backed investors who already hold roughly 70% of McLaren Racing — are moving to scoop up the rest of the company in a transaction that pegs the F1 outfit at around £3 billion. The deal, as reported in the City, would effectively hand the Middle Eastern partners complete control of the racing operation.
It’s a striking valuation for a team that, not too long ago, was fighting to keep the lights on. Back in 2020 McLaren went hunting for cash to stabilise the wider group and brought in MSP Sports Capital. MSP’s initial investment arrived at a race-team valuation of about £560 million and built to a 33% stake by the end of 2022. Fast forward fewer than five years and MSP is now poised to exit at a figure that would crystallise a gain in the region of £800 million. That’s private equity doing exactly what it says on the tin.
Mumtalakat, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, has long been the anchor shareholder and has posted record annual results of late. CYVN — owned by the Abu Dhabi government and already intertwined with McLaren through its acquisition of the road-car business and a non-controlling slice of Racing — joined the party in April last year. Together, they look set to consolidate McLaren under a single, aligned ownership group spanning Manama to Abu Dhabi.
If you’re wondering why the price tag starts with a three, start with the sporting context. McLaren’s competitive turnaround from early-2020s strugglers to a front-running force has been one of the stories of the current era. The Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri pairing has delivered wins, relentless points hauls and, crucially, the kind of consistency sponsors and investors love. The wider ecosystem helps too: Formula 1’s cost cap era has made the grid investable, the modern Concorde Agreement has smoothed out prize-money distribution, and F1’s booming reach has opened up new revenue streams that simply didn’t exist a decade ago.
The business has kept pace. McLaren swung to a £12.9 million profit for the 2023 financial year — a sharp pivot from a £57.8m loss the year before — and rode its on-track success into 2024 with a healthier commercial outlook. Prize money for 2025 is paid on 2024’s final order, and with McLaren banking its first Constructors’ Championship in two decades last year, the team’s cheque from Formula One Management gets meaningfully fatter this season. That tailwind doesn’t vanish overnight either.
Then there’s the hardest currency in modern sport: a title sponsor. McLaren ends a 12-year drought in 2026 when Mastercard steps up as naming partner. In commercial terms, that’s validation — and it’s been suggested the deal could be worth around £74m per year. Shiny decals don’t win races, but they help pay for the people and tools that do.
For the governance geeks, full control by Mumtalakat and CYVN would bring a cleaner cap table and quicker decision-making at a time when F1’s competitive cycle is in flux. New engine regs arrive in 2026, a moment when missteps are expensive and decisiveness matters. A unified boardroom should make it easier to allocate capital into performance infrastructure and long-term hiring without the wrangling that can come with a more fragmented ownership.
It also tells you something about where elite teams sit in 2025. The grid’s valuations have rocketed as the budget cap has turned “spend to win” into “operate smartly to win,” and as F1’s global audience continues to balloon. The barriers to entry are higher than ever — see Andretti’s stalled bid — which only props up the value of the ten existing franchises. In that context, £3bn for a heritage team at the peak of its competitive powers doesn’t sound outlandish.
None of this guarantees endless glory. Titles are earned one pit stop at a time, and 2025 is already shaping up to be a knife fight up front. But the direction of travel is undeniable. From the existential jitters of 2020 to a boardroom flex five years later, McLaren has rebranded itself as both a sporting heavyweight and a serious business — exactly the sort of platform that sovereign investors like to double down on.
If and when the ink dries, consider it the latest marker of F1’s new reality: big teams, big governance, bigger ambitions — and an even bigger price of admission.
