All right, we're going to get started. Okay, great. We are very happy to have at the conference for the first time Derek Chang, President and CEO of Liberty Media. Thanks so much for being here.
Thanks for having me. Good to see everyone.
Okay, so Derek, you've been in the Liberty CEO seat for about five months now. You have an extensive history in sports media, leagues, and content distribution. Maybe you can run us through your background and what attracted you to taking this role at Liberty.
Sure. As you mentioned, I do have a career that spans a lot of different companies in sort of the media, entertainment, and sports industries, ranging from starting my career in cable television back in the mid-1990s with a small company called InterMedia Partners, which happened to be a TCI. TCI was a partner in these various ventures, and that's how I first got to TCI and got to meet John Malone. Later, helped start the New York Yankees—bad word here—but Sports Network, the YES Network in New York.
Ended up at Charter Communications for a bit, and then I had a long run at DirecTV, where I sort of flipped over from the finance side of things to the content and entertainment side and managed our business there and sort of did all the negotiations with the programming partners as well as people like the NFL and movie studios. Ended up over in Asia for a bit with Scripps Networks, where I kind of went into lifestyle, which actually has bearing on what we do with Food Network and HGTV. Then ran the NBA in China for a couple of years as the CEO there. Sort of started rotating back towards the US about four or five years ago and went on the board of Liberty Media. This is sort of my third or fourth stint kind of working with John.
First at TCI, at DirecTV, when Liberty bought News Corp's interest. I went on the board of Starz for a bit, probably 10 years ago or over 10 years ago, and then the board of Liberty. Late last year, as we transitioned management at Liberty, and I was speaking to John, he asked if I would take this role to run Liberty. For me, it was a combination of things. One, the assets that we have right now between Formula One, knock wood, we should be getting towards a close on MotoGP, our sports assets, global sports assets. Given my background, I'm very familiar with that and sort of my interest in these assets.
I think, as or more importantly, even as my relationship with John through these years and sort of the familiarity there, the opportunity, frankly, to work with John again, as well as the Liberty management team. On top of that, we have an executive committee of the board right now, which is John, Dobb Bennett, who used to run Liberty, who I've known a long time, as well as Chase Carey, who joined the Liberty board late last year. Chase is actually the one who hired me at DirecTV, so I've worked with Chase for a long time. The ability to work with sort of some of the biggest figures in our industry over the last 50 years in this setting with this group of people has probably really attracted me to the role.
Got it. Great overview. We asked a variation of this question at TKO just before, but when you look at Formula One today, interested to know how you gauge the state of the sport as it pertains to fan engagement or cultural resonance. Relatedly, what's your view of the on-track product, especially with the new regs coming up?
First of all, I think we actually have more people in the room than TKO just did, so I'll get to tell Mark that later when I see you. Thank you all. I think the state of the sport, we're in great shape right now. You see it sort of across multiple fronts. I think you see it from an attendance standpoint. We keep sort of raising the bar at each race almost in terms of attendance. Some of these races are doing more than 400,000 attendees for the entire weekend. Viewership continues to rise, generally speaking, across the board. I think in the U.S. this year, our ratings are up on the weekends for full weekends, probably 45% or so year over year, which is a testament to sort of probably what's going on on track.
In addition, I think you see the engagement that we are getting from the sponsor community. This has been a huge sort of lift here in the recent past. It's always been strong, but if you see the names that are now associating with Formula One, LVMH, Amex coming into Vegas, and then upscaling to a global deal. LEGO on the licensing front. I do not know how many of you guys saw the whole promotion that we did in Miami with LEGO, with the driver's parade and sort of all the life-size LEGO cars. That had, I believe, 10 billion unique views across the internet. I realize that some kids were probably tapping on it about 100 times, but still, the phenomenon is huge.
I think what it really points to is this sort of underlying current of Formula One really being a true sort of mainstream entertainment asset. It's gone well beyond the core sports crowd, and now it touches a lot of different people, a lot of different demographics. We are probably one of the younger skewing sports leagues. I think our average age fan is probably around 35 years old and a huge pickup among female fans over the last 5 to 10 years. The state of the sport right now, I think it's in a great place. I think in terms of the on-track racing, even though Oscar, I believe, has won four races this year, I think it's been a bit more of a competitive situation across the different races that we've had.
You've got some of the rivalry between Oscar and Lando, and all that's great, as you might imagine, for television and for just the following and the fandom and sort of the conversation that it initiates. I think that's all great. We've got new regs coming in next year. We'll see what happens. Again, controversy is actually not a bad thing in terms of driving engagement. We'll see. I don't think our sport is necessarily dependent every year on exactly what happens on the track. Clearly, more excitement is better, but I think we've actually gotten the sport to the point where this is much more of a cultural phenomenon and not just sort of what happens on the racetrack.
Look, I don't know for sure, but I'm sure there are some of our fan base that barely watch the races, and they're in it for sort of, again, the cultural aspect of it and sort of the coolness factor and the lifestyle factors. That's all great because at the end, what we're trying to get to is a premium brand, and let alone a premium sports brand, but just a premium brand. I think what you're seeing is that that's kind of happening and materializing right before our eyes.
Got it. F1 recently finalized the commercial elements of the Concord agreements with the teams that run through 2030. How would you characterize the relationship generally between F1 and the teams coming out of this process? How important is it to have alignment with them?
Yeah. For context, when Liberty bought Formula One, we put Chase Carey in as the CEO. Chase and I had a long history together at DirecTV. I've seen each other off and on over the years, but really over the last few months, as we've both been engaged in this project, has been a lot of time together, which means we end up at races together, having breakfast together. Chase has actually—it's been a great history lesson for me because he's walked me through a lot of what's happened in F1, even before Liberty owned, but certainly during his tenure. I think the friction that was quite evident when Liberty bought F1, the F1 versus the teams, the local promoters, it was a bit of a mess. Chase, to his credit, really took huge strides towards cleaning that up. Under Stefano, it's continued to improve.
I think what you're seeing today as we go to renew this Concord Agreement is, A, just the actual environment of the negotiation, our discussion was very positive and constructive, and it was not like a zero-sum game, but how do we actually continue to build this sport collectively? I think what you also see is even stuff that is not necessarily written into the Concord, where we have to work with the teams, say a LEGO deal, for instance, and get everyone to sign up. You probably recall the first season of Netflix's Drive to Survive. Mercedes and Ferrari did not participate in that, whereas now you see this LEGO deal and everyone's participated, and you see the impact of that.
I think the last bit I'll add is I've actually spent some good time in the paddock over the last, probably even three races at this point already this year. The general consensus of everyone in the paddock, despite all the small negotiations we have, the complaints we have about this, that, and the other thing, is they all are very appreciative of what Liberty and Formula One have done to raise the profile of the sport and, frankly, raise their valuations at the end of the day. I think that's been significant. They are sitting here saying, "Hey, we've watched this unfold. We like what you guys have done. We believe in you guys." I think that's the spirit of the partnership that we have right now.
Got it. As you just saw with the prior Q&A, media rights are very much top of mind for investors right now. Before I press you on the US renewal, which you know I'll do, I want to get your high-level view on rights, and this would apply globally, right? And how you think about factors such as balancing region payment, linear versus streaming, or even your response to some of the perceived kind of shortcomings of F1 as a property, like a more limited ad load or different time zones.
Yeah. To be honest with you, I don't really think about it like that anymore. Those trade-offs, I feel like that was sort of a construct from the past almost. Because we think about what we are delivering, and every weekend we're delivering multiple days of content, multiple days of compelling content. Beyond what even happens at the racetrack, there's all this other content around Formula One, where teams are going out and promoting themselves, what drivers are doing, what drivers are eating for breakfast, what they're eating for dinner. Whatever it is, it's Formula One, and it's always on.
I think what we are trying to do as we look at the landscape is how do you insert yourself, not as a sport, but really as almost a content producer into this environment and continue to sort of both build the sport, but really, as I was saying earlier, build the brand. I think that is where the world has gone. The platforms, and look, the broadcasters who focus on the event or the game, even they sit there and are figuring out how do they have assets that can sort of ingest and take in all the other surrounding content and run it across their various platforms. The digital guys clearly have somewhat of an advantage here because they're not bound by the various technologies and that sort of stuff. They can basically take any amount of content they want proliferated across their platforms.
What I see in having spent almost my entire life in sort of media and sports rights and all that sort of stuff is it's just a different way of viewing it now. It's not sort of the historic, "We have 24 races. How much are you paying me per race for this content?
Got it. All right. So you've stated you're in active talks at the moment for a new U.S. rights agreement. I'll ask you if there's any update to provide. Given the U.S. is still very much a growth market for Formula One behind a healthy payment, what kind of support are you looking for in a partner?
According to Mark Shapiro, we don't hit the radar screen because he didn't mention us as sort of a major race negotiation.
Before 2020.
You know what? Mark's actually right in the scheme of things when you look at sort of what the NFL and the NBA and baseball get in the U.S. We're not a major player, but globally, we are. As I look at it again, it's sort of where does the U.S. fit into kind of that landscape less from a media rights payment standpoint, but what are we doing with F1 to build the property here in the U.S.? I think it starts with fundamentally the Netflix Drive to Survive kickstarted a lot of things for us, the addition of Miami first and then Las Vegas. We now have three races here in the U.S. I think we've got this—I mean, this is a global phenomenon, but the Apple movie coming out this summer.
There is sort of this level of increased engagement in the U.S. and the growing of our fans here across, again, multiple fronts. To answer your question about what we're looking for, we're obviously looking for a partner that can help us continue to grow the fan base. We are, I believe, in the U.S. still pretty early on. Especially when you compare against other U.S. domestic leagues where we sit in that pantheon, it's pretty low still, which means there's a lot of headroom, and it's up to us to go out and capitalize on that.
Got it. F1 TV is a really unique product in our view, and the growth there is a bit of a contrast to other leagues and promotions, which are kind of pulling back from direct distribution. What's the advantage of this type of model, and how do you balance that against the need to give your local partners exclusivity in some cases?
Yeah. I think we've—and I wouldn't say we necessarily designed it this way, but I would say we've been good partners. Depending on the different markets and what the needs are of our local broadcast partners, we've probably flexed to accommodate sort of different models, whether it's us going side by side in a market with F1 TV or F1 TV allowing them to effectively wholesale it. Whatever it is, we've been able to do, and it's actually allowed us to continue to grow the subscriber base of F1 TV, and particularly in the U.S., which is probably our biggest market for F1 TV. I think we are uniquely situated here in the sense that we actually have a decent portion of our, whatever you want to call it, media revenues coming from F1 TV here in the U.S.
I think that as we look forward, what we want to do, putting aside the economics, is we do want to have that relationship with the customer, with the fan. I think that'll help us on multiple fronts. One, it just feeds into sort of the 24/7 F1 always on. What are our fans doing? What are they interested in? Are they interested in this type of content? Are they interested in this type of merchandise? Are they interested in $50 tickets versus $5,000 tickets? Whatever it is, that's another data point for us. It helps us sort of amass a lot of data around our customers and our fans, which is helpful to, again, designing what the right offers are for fans. Also our sponsor partners and folks like that, they demand that sort of data.
The more sort of transparency we have into that, the better off we are. Ultimately, too, the other big benefit of having F1 TV out there for us is who knows where the media landscape goes. It's different today than it was three years ago, which was different than three years before that. There may come a day that in certain markets, that is our product because we have the reach that we need. We have sort of the promotional value that we need. Maybe that is the best way to serve our fans in a particular market.
Got it. The pending U.S. deal certainly gets a lot of focus, but like you said, F1, global sport. When you look across the balance of the regions, are there markets that kind of stand out as growth opportunities for rights, either because the sport's really taking off or maybe just changes in local media ecosystems?
Yeah. I think as I look really far out in the future, clearly there are some pretty big markets out there that we're only really sort of scratching the surface on. You look at a market like China where we've actually had a race, and we probably haven't, probably not invested what we should in terms of trying to build that market for ourselves. You look at a market like India, for instance, where the combination of sports, entertainment, those are big businesses in India, just not F1. Can we break through in a way? F1 brings a lot of what you see in a market like that, which is that juxtaposition of sports and entertainment and the Bollywood, and IPL is a big sport there clearly, but can you even scratch the surface of that?
I think there are markets because there's this narrative out there that all of a sudden media rights will ultimately go asymptotic or whatever you want to call it. I just think there are markets out there that we still haven't fully even penetrated.
Got it. Maybe we could shift gears to promotions. A few years ago, Liberty and F1 made the unique decision to self-promote in Las Vegas. I think fans and stakeholders gauged that event as a successful addition to the calendar. It has proven to be a little more challenging for Formula One financially than anticipated. How do you view the success of Vegas so far? Has it been worth the overall investment, and how much are you focused on this?
We think that Vegas has been a huge success. I think underpinning part of our US strategy, it's been huge. I think in terms of bringing new entrants into the F1 ecosystem, like American Express, who came in as a local partner, and even LVMH came into Vegas first. Those guys have now expanded to become global partners of F1. I think, and also just the production value of having a race in Vegas, even some of the mishaps that happened were fun and entertaining if you think about it. On that front, it's been great.
I think financially and operationally, there's probably more work to be done, but I'm probably less concerned about our ability to do that work just because in an event business like this, especially when you're standing something up, there's a lot of unknowns that sort of smack you in the face, especially in the first couple of years. Once you're in it, you kind of understand what needs to get done, and those unknowns become more known, and you can budget for it. You can provision against it and sort of drive you to a more optimal cost structure. It comes down to, okay, what are you doing on the revenue side?
I think the falloff from first year to second year was probably a bit more dramatic than we anticipated, but we see the path going forward now in terms of rebasing and as we build. Look, the Vegas race from a revenue standpoint, and we do not release sort of race-specific numbers, but the performance there has probably been one of our better races in the ecosystem. On a relative basis, year over year, we have work to do on a relative basis against the ecosystem. It is a good spot, but we see the opportunity, and I think there are a couple of things happening on that front in terms of assessing what the right supply of inventory is, where we have paddock, where we have Grandstand, what the ticket pricing is. Do we need to make sort of single-day tickets available for certain fans to provide greater access?
All of that is stuff that's sort of work in progress, but with two years under our belt, we have a lot more information. I think we continue to build those data sets that will help us going forward. I don't see sort of the revenue picture going from last year to this year and then flattening. I think this year will be better than last year, and we will continue to build and continue to push towards sort of sell-out situations that allow us to really dictate what sort of happens moving forward.
Can we just dig in on that point a little bit? Right. We have observed a bit of a different approach to the selling cycle this year for Vegas, and ultimately, what's going to get bundled into that ticket? Maybe just talk to the rationale there.
Yeah. I think what we did is we have dropped on a relative basis some of the pricing, and we see the tickets moving better at this time this year than we do last year. We are sort of cautiously optimistic that the game plan is playing out as we anticipated, and look, we'll see what happens when we get the race date. Right now, we're tracking on a basis that we're happy with.
Got it. Maybe moving to sponsorships. The past 12 months, we've seen a lot of progress for F1 here, adding new partners, refreshing deals for existing verticals. When you look at the portfolio, are there big outstanding categories still available either globally or regionally? How do you think about enhancing the value of the inventory?
Yeah. First, I'd like to just call out the F1 team and the job that they've done on sponsorships over the last few years. I think that if you look at where we were a few years ago, it's probably more of an endemic sponsorship base. It's probably more of a B2B sponsorship base. The names that we've added sort of in the past couple of years between LVMH, Amex, folks like that, I mean, these are obviously blue-chip consumer companies, which has in itself just broadened the universe of sponsors that we can approach and attract. I think there's a little bit of sort of other folks out there now seeing, hey, why would LVMH attach to F1? Why would Amex do that? Why would LEGO do that? Licensing is an area that's probably been underpenetrated for us.
You see someone like LEGO do what they've done and sort of create the buzz around that affiliation. I think other guys will sit there and go, now I get it. That's why they did it. I see how that's working for their business. I can make that work for our business. I think you're going to continue to see that sort of interest in aligning with Formula One, which we feel will continue to pay off for us. I think in terms of categories, these guys have done a good job of filling in sort of the white spaces. There's certainly always certain categories that are out there. I think we're still searching for a soft drink provider. I think even though we've probably sliced up the financial services segment, I think we're looking for a private wealth partner.
I say that because I'm at a JP Morgan conference, so maybe someone's listening.
I can remember.
I think our team has done a really good job. I think that being said, there's always room to grow, and I think you'll see that over the next few years.
Can we just dig in on licensing a little bit? It's been a nascent business line for F1, but you're definitely highlighting it a lot more now. It sounds like there's just a kind of natural momentum. Is it just about kind of finding more consumer products, apparel, experiences? How does that kind of grow from here? What role does that sort of just play strategically in expanding the brand?
Yeah. I think from a context standpoint, we started sort of on the experiential side with F1 Arcade, F1 Experiences, attaching ourselves to that, which is a slight extension from being able to go to a race. Part of that is just, hey, if there are others willing to sort of build those experiences for us and with us, it's another way for our fans to interact because you only have 24 races, which means there's only 24 locations in this world that people can go experience a race. That has sort of broadened out to sort of consumer products, and you've seen the deals with Marvel. You've seen the deal with LEGO.
I think that there continues to be others now that sit there and say, "Hey, I think this is a good way for me to align with Formula One and what that does for my own product set." I think the other thing that goes unspoken sometimes, and I think Mark actually said it earlier, is what does this do for F1? Right. If we are aligning with the right partners who are out there with premium brands themselves or the right types of brands in all these categories, but they are throwing promotional weight behind it, those are the sorts of partners we want to be with. It is kind of like on the media side too, right?
You don't want someone just sort of televising your races and not thinking about all the other times of the year other than the 24 races, but how they're thinking about it across the board, 365 days a year.
Got it. Let's touch upon MotoGP. That's pending approval with EC. Shares a lot of characteristics with F1 in terms of structure and revenue lines, but will differ slightly from the 2016 deal in that you'll carry through the existing management team. How are you at Liberty kind of thinking about the expertise you can leverage to help them?
First and foremost, we are eagerly awaiting approval from the European Commission. We can constructively with them to see that through. When hopefully we close, we are very excited to get engaged with the MotoGP management team. They've done a fantastic job of building sort of the core elements of a sport and a passionate fan base. I don't know if you've been to a MotoGP race, but it's probably one of the more thrilling experiences you can have. I think you can't replicate that. Sitting on the board of Liberty at the time that we made this decision, I was all in favor of it because I know how scarce these sorts of assets are.
I think that as we look at it from a Liberty perspective, there are elements of this where, and broadly speaking, you'd sit there and say, "Hey, I think replicating what we did at F1 would be admirable here in the sense of taking a very core sports product and broadening the reach and broadening the appeal so that you're more mainstream and therefore opening up the aperture of everyone you want to engage with, whether it's the fans, TV, sponsors, all that sort of stuff." How we go about it probably won't be exactly what we did at F1. There are differences to the two properties. They will be run separately.
With the knowledge that we have and the experiences that we've had at F1, we can carry a lot of that forward to Moto and I think see a lot of the expansion impact that we had at F1 happen there too.
Great. Assuming a close on that deal, I think leverage at F1 goes to a range of between three and a half and four times. We assume debt paydown would be a priority of cash use for a period. The question we often get from investors is, what's kind of the longer-term plan? How do you and John kind of see the most effective way to allocate capital from what will be two very cash-generative businesses?
The good news is I think we have a little bit of time in the sense that once we close this deal, as you mentioned, our leverage will be at a pretty good level. We will start to delever pretty quickly given the cash-generative properties of these businesses. We are having those discussions internally as to what we think the next phase of Liberty and the Liberty companies are. We have a little bit of time here. Look, the markets, as we know, are quite volatile, and who knows what happens to the markets, but we feel like we'll be well-positioned to the extent opportunities start to arise out of what's happening out there. I think that's probably one we stay tuned, but we recognize that at some point, as we do pay down debt, we'll probably be thinking about how to spend the cash.
Got it. Last November, you announced plans to re-attribute assets between two trackers within Liberty Media, namely Formula One Group and Liberty Live. You are going to spin out the live piece, setting up two separate fully asset-backed stocks and thus ending the long-standing tracking structure. Maybe can you update us on where things stand with that process and just refresh on the rationale?
Yeah. I think it was all about structural simplification and putting ourselves in a position to have that flexibility. I think that we stated that in November right around our investor conference, and that continues to be the plan here. From a process standpoint, I think it's all going according to plan. We had, I think, indicated that we think we'd hopefully be effective sometime in the second half of this year, and I think that's still the plan. Once the two assets are separate, we will take each one independently and determine the plans and strategies from there.
Got it. We are coming down to the end. I want to ask you, next month is going to see the global theatrical release with an IMAX window of F1 starring Brad Pitt. Have you seen the film? Do you know anyone who has? What does this moment mean for the sport?
I've not seen it. I'm very excited to go and watch it with the population out there who are F1 fans and probably beyond. I think this is a pretty significant moment in terms of the amount of sort of investment, promotion that Apple, Warner Bros., putting into a project like this. Brad Pitt, Jerry Bruckheimer, clearly these are some of the biggest names out there for a film like this. Despite the fact that I spent part of my life in the sort of entertainment side of things, you can't ever really gauge how a movie will do until it hits the opening weekend. I think we all feel pretty good about it. Eddie Q at Apple feels great about it. I just got to talk to him.
I think in terms of another leg up on the F1 story and what it's become and who this movie will hopefully attract and bring further new fans into the ecosystem, satiate the needs of the existing fans, I am eagerly anticipating the film.
Got it. All right. That's a great point to close on. Derek, thanks so much for being here.
Thanks for having me.