Formula 1 allows investors to hold positions in multiple competing teams without the ownership caps that define North American professional sports, a structural oddity now drawing formal complaints from McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown.
Brown sent a letter to FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem calling for ownership rule changes, according to sources familiar with the correspondence. The timing follows months of quiet concern among team principals about cross-holdings that remain legal under current FIA governance but would trigger immediate divestiture orders in the NFL, NBA, or MLB. The letter's existence confirms what three team commercial directors told *Sports Edge* in April: the ownership question has moved from gossip to boardroom pressure.
The contrast is absolute. NFL bylaws prohibit any ownership interest, however small, in more than one franchise. The NBA maintains a similar hard ban. MLB's ownership rules bar even passive minority stakes across teams. Formula 1's sporting and financial regulations contain no equivalent restriction. An individual or fund can own 10% of one constructor and 15% of another without violating a single line of FIA code. This matters because private equity has begun circling the grid. Liberty Media's decision to permit up to 25% passive institutional investment per team, announced in 2023, opened the door. Now multiple funds are sizing stakes, and some are exploring portfolio approaches—backing two or three teams simultaneously to derisk single-constructor exposure.
The governance gap creates three problems team operators now discuss openly in sponsor dinners but rarely on record. First, competitive information flow. A shared investor attends both teams' board meetings, hears budget allocation in real time, knows which aero concept is working. The Concorde Agreement's anti-collusion language was written for team-to-team contact, not investor-mediated intelligence sharing. Second, strategic coordination. If the same fund owns stakes in two midfield teams, does it nudge both toward the same gearbox supplier to secure volume pricing? That's rational capital allocation and possibly a technical regulation breach, depending on how FIA reads the rules on a given Thursday. Third, exit pressure. A fund that owns pieces of three teams has an incentive to push all three toward the same IPO window or sale process, compressing valuations and limiting strategic buyers. This is exactly what NFL ownership rules were designed to prevent after the 1960s AFL-NFL merger debates.
McLaren's letter is not altruism. Brown has spent two years positioning McLaren as the grid's most commercially transparent operation, courting U.S. institutional investors who understand NFL-style governance and expect it. If Formula 1 tightens ownership rules, McLaren benefits as the team that already operates as if those rules existed. If the FIA does nothing, Brown has created a paper trail for future governance fights. Either way, the letter is strategy dressed as principle.
The FIA has three options. Impose hard bans NFL-style, forcing immediate divestitures—politically difficult with Liberty Media's equity push barely 18 months old. Implement disclosure thresholds and conflict-of-interest screens, the gentler European approach that satisfies no one but delays the problem. Or do nothing and let the Concorde Agreement renegotiation in 2025-2026 become the forcing function, when teams use ownership rules as leverage for revenue split changes. Brown's letter suggests he expects option three and is building the case now.
Watch whether other team principals countersign similar letters before the Canadian Grand Prix in June, when the F1 Commission meets next. The presence or absence of Red Bull's Christian Horner's name will signal whether this is a McLaren solo or a coalition play.
The takeaway
F1's lack of multi-team ownership bans lets investors hold competing stakes, a structure Brown now challenges as PE circles the grid.
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