Formula 1 operates without the multi-team ownership prohibitions that American stick-and-ball leagues and European football federations spent decades codifying. No written rule prevents a single investor from taking stakes in McLaren and Ferrari simultaneously. No governance document defines "control" or "material influence." The regulatory void exists because the commercial rights holder and the sporting regulator never needed to close it—until private equity started writing nine-figure checks and asking whether portfolio theory applies to paddock passes.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown sent a letter to FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem this month calling for explicit common-ownership prohibitions. The timing is not subtle. Liberty Media sold a $700 million minority stake in its F1 commercial arm to CVC and LNK Partners in January. Audi enters the grid in 2026, backed by Qatar's sovereign wealth apparatus. RedBull's Thai shareholder structure already generates annual compliance memos. Brown's letter arrives as the ownership map fragments and the governing body's 1990s-era conflict-of-interest language starts looking like a photocopy of a fax.
The NFL bans cross-ownership outright. English Premier League rules cap silent partners at 9.9% unless approved by competing clubs. NBA governors cannot hold equity in more than one franchise, period. Formula 1's International Sporting Code Section 1.2.4 prohibits "undue influence," a phrase litigated exactly zero times in the hybrid era. The rule assumes good faith. The business model now assumes $20 billion valuations and institutional LPs asking their GPs whether F1 fits next to NBA and Serie A holdings in the same fund. The FIA has no precedent, no tribunal framework, no published guidance. It has a sentence in a PDF and a compliance officer in Geneva who used to work on fuel-flow sensors.
Brown's concern is operational, not philosophical. If a single investor holds 15% of McLaren and 12% of Aston Martin, does that investor see both teams' 2027 aero development timelines? Do they attend both technical briefings? When McLaren's CFO pitches a $40 million simulator expansion and Aston's CFO pitches a $50 million wind tunnel, does the shared investor compare IRRs and pick one? The NFL solved this in 1978 with clear thresholds. F1 solved it by not solving it, which worked fine when teams were owned by cigarette companies and energy-drink marketers who had no interest in diversification. It works less fine when Arctos Partners is returning LP calls.
The commercial incentive cuts both ways. Liberty wants institutional capital in the sport; institutional capital wants exposure without sector concentration risk. A family office that buys 8% of Williams might reasonably want 6% of Haas two years later, same asset class, different technical execution. That structure is legal today. It would trigger antitrust review in the NBA and outright prohibition in the Premier League. In Formula 1, it triggers a phone call from the FIA asking for confirmation that neither team shares data, which the family office's counsel confirms in a two-page letter, and everyone moves on until *The Athletic* publishes a flowchart.
Brown is not asking for novelty. He is asking for the baseline governance that exists in every comparable league, codified and enforceable. The FIA has two options: write the rule now, while ownership is still concentrated enough to grandfather existing stakes without litigation, or write it later, after a fund owns pieces of four teams and the competitive-integrity questions land in Swiss arbitration. The Premier League wrote its rule in 1998 after ENIC bought stakes in six clubs and the other fourteen demanded clarity. F1 is in the clarity window. The window has a deadline, and the deadline is the first time a driver signs with one team while his manager's co-investor owns part of another.
The FIA's next Technical Working Group meeting is scheduled for late June. Brown's letter will either appear on the governance subcommittee agenda or it will not. If it does not, expect a second letter, this time co-signed by half the grid. The teams have spent three years arguing about cost-cap enforcement and flexi-wing legality. They do not want to spend 2027 arguing about whether two teams with overlapping cap tables should share a windtunnel booking calendar.
The takeaway
F1 has no multi-ownership ban; Brown's FIA letter forces the governance question before institutional capital makes it a legal one.
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