Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Liberty Media Corporation 2020 quarter two earnings call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question- and- answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded August 10th. I would now like to turn the conference over to Courtnee Chun, Chief Portfolio Officer and Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that this call includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent forms, 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this call. Liberty Media expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement contained herein to reflect any change in Liberty Media's expectations with regard thereto, or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any such statement is based. On today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted OIBDA and adjusted EBITDA.
The required definitions and reconciliations for Liberty Media and SiriusXM, schedules one and two, can be found at the end of the earnings press release issued today, which is available on our website. I'd like to turn the call over to Liberty President and CEO, Greg Maffei.
Good morning, and thank you, Courtnee. Today, speaking on the call, we will also have Formula One Chairman and CEO, Chase Carey, and Liberty's Chief Accounting Officer and Principal Financial Officer, Brian Wendling. First, I hope you all are healthy and safe and have been enjoying your summer given these challenging circumstances. Second, I'd like to again thank our management teams and employees that have done such an impressive job managing through this COVID-19 crisis. First, looking at Liberty SiriusXM, we completed the previously announced rights offering. It was fully subscribed, generated proceeds of $754 million, and we used that money to fully repay the intergroup loan that Liberty SiriusXM had to the Formula One Group. During that period, we paused our share repurchases as we were prohibited from being in the market during the rights offering.
We are certainly aware that the discounting remains, and we have ample liquidity at LSXM and expect to take full advantage of the discount opportunity. Our ownership at SiriusXM now stands as of July 28th at 72.9%. Siri also paused its buybacks in Q2 due to market conditions and the depths of the COVID crisis, but recently extended their authorization by $2 billion. We remain very focused on getting to 80% at Siri. Looking at Sirius itself, like our other subscription businesses, Sirius has proved resilient during the crisis. Self-pay net adds, subscriber adds, were 264,000 and churn was down to 1.6%. During the quarter, we generated over half a billion dollars of free cash flow. We also announced the deal to acquire Stitcher, creating a full-service platform for podcast creators, publishers, and advertisers, and also announced a smaller deal, Simplecast, with podcast management and analytic platform services.
SiriusXM continues to provide innovative programming and launching new acts, including the Beastie Boys, Bob Marley, Coldplay, Queen. You know how much I enjoy Freddie Mercury, and the comedian Jim Gaffigan. With strength and visibility to the business, we offer new 2020 guidance at SiriusXM. Turning briefly to the Formula One Group, you'll hear more from Chase in a moment. We returned to racing at the beginning of July. We now have completed five races. We're still targeting a 15- 18 race season, we continue to move the business forward. We have a new lower cost cap that will go into effect in 2021. We have new broadcasting and sponsorship deals. The teams and all of our partners have been doing a tremendous job of returning to the track.
Yesterday we had an exciting race at Silverstone, where Red Bull and Max Verstappen had a great strategy that they executed on very well upon to win. It was exciting racing. Turning to Live Nation, their top priority in the recent months has been strengthening their financial position. They announced an amendment to their credit agreement, which suspends their leverage covenant till the end of 2021 and provides increased flexibility. They recently reported results last week, still bullish on the future of live events, even if the near term of ticket is turbulent rather. They've already sold 19 million tickets over 4,000 concerts and festivals that are scheduled for 2021. Management expects live events can return to scale in the summer of 2021. In a positive note, 86% of fans opted to keep their tickets for rescheduled shows even if they were offered refunds.
Two-thirds of their fans keeping tickets for canceled festivals so they can go to next year's show. Virtual concerts are generating big demand with fans. Over 67 million fans viewed 18,000 virtual concerts globally in the second quarter. We had over 150 performances for our virtual Lollapalooza, and we launched socially distant shows in permitted locations, including New Zealand, France, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Finland, and select cities across the U.S. Now turning to Braves. Glad to see the Braves return to the field, and they're off to a strong start with an 11-6 record, including 7-2 at home, and they've won all three series at Truist Park.
In series play, they are five and one, which is tied for the most such victories in the majors. It was very sad to see our number one, Mike Soroka, end the season early with a torn Achilles, and we do wish him a speedy recovery. The Braves still have four former first-round picks in starting rotation with Max Fried, Sean Newcomb, Kyle Wright, and Touki Toussaint. Early in the year, Markakis opted out in the season, but he since returned, and he returned with a bang with a walk-off homer last week in his debut.
While we wait for Greg to return, I'll continue on and then hand it over to Chase. Good morning, everyone. At the end of June, we amended the term loan and revolving credit facility at Formula One. The net leverage covenant will not apply until our first testing date for the quarter ending March 31, 2022, providing the business additional flexibility to operate during this uncertain time. Braves Holdings is expected to be out of compliance with certain debt covenants at the end of the quarter. We continue to work with the lenders to obtain waivers and covenant modifications. These discussions are going well, and we are optimistic that we will have a favorable resolution by the end of the month. Liberty SiriusXM Group had attributed cash, restricted cash, and liquid investments of $154 million, excluding $1.8 billion of cash and restricted cash held at SiriusXM.
We have $870 million of undrawn margin loan capacity at the parent level. The value of the SiriusXM common stock and Live Nation stock held at Liberty SiriusXM as of Friday's close was $22 billion, which excludes the value of the Live Nation call spread, which is held at Formula One Group, valued at $210 million at quarter end. We have $2.1 billion in principal amount of debt against these holdings. Total Liberty SiriusXM Group attributed principal amount of debt is $12.6 billion, which includes $9.4 billion of debt at Liberty SiriusXM. Formula One Group had attributed cash and liquid investments of $1.4 billion, which excludes $324 million of cash at Formula One. Total Formula One Group attributed principal amount of debt was $3.6 billion, which includes the $2.9 billion of debt held directly by Formula One, leaving $733 million at the corporate level.
Lastly, to the Braves, we had attributed cash, liquid investments, and restricted cash of $329 million and attributed debt of $718 million. With that, I will turn it over to Chase to talk more about Formula One.
Okay. Thank you, Brian. I guess I'll keep going and wait for Greg's return at some point. We were thrilled to return to racing with the launch of our 2020 season in Austria the first weekend in July. It was an exciting race that saw a lot of competition in the midfield with an action-packed last few laps that earned Lando Norris his first podium finish. In the five races so far, we've seen Lewis Hamilton fighting for his seventh world championship. The continued strength and ingenuity of Red Bull, the struggles of Ferrari, the emergence of McLaren and Racing Point as serious contenders. Our data through the first four races of the season have produced solid viewership growth across the race weekend, especially in key markets like China.
Witnessed tremendous growth on our digital platforms measured in video views, social media interactions, and traffic across the website and app. The drama in the paddock built this summer as a number of driver changes were announced for 2021. Ferrari decided not to renew four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel and instead signed Carlos Sainz. His open seat at McLaren went to Daniel Ricciardo, which will make for a strong and entertaining pairing with Lando Norris. Renault decided to fill their vacant seat with former champion Fernando Alonso, and Valtteri Bottas re-signed with Mercedes for 2021. There's continued speculation around Sebastian Vettel, so more to come. Just prior to the start of the season, we launched our We Race As One initiative to tackle the major issues that we as a sport and a society are facing.
We used our restart to show that we stand united against racism and are doing more to address inequality and diversity in Formula One, while also taking a moment to thank people around the world for the fortitude they've shown against the global COVID-19 pandemic. We will be establishing a task force to listen and identify the right initiatives required to increase diversity and inclusion across Formula One, specifically focused on identifying employment and education opportunities and the required actions to affect change. We're in the process of creating a foundation to primarily finance internships and apprenticeships within Formula One for underrepresented groups. These efforts build on the ambitious sustainability, diversity, and inclusion strategies set out in November 2019, which set goals of having a net zero carbon footprint by 2030 and ensuring all of our events are sustainable by 2025. Getting back to racing has been no easy feat.
I'd like to thank the FIA, our employees, the teams and drivers, our promoter partners, and local authorities. Together, we developed an extensive code of conduct and testing protocols that are being closely followed and have been working well. Our priority has always been to safely transport everyone and to enable those individuals to operate in a safe and secure manner. We've been publishing our testing results each week as we believe it's good to provide this transparency. At Silverstone, we saw firsthand how our safety procedures are robust and effective. Sadly, Sergio Pérez tested positive for the virus, but our trace and test procedure handled the situation safely and with efficiency, with no impact on the race weekend for the wider sport. It shows how far we've come since Australia and is a testament to the diligent way that we've returned to racing.
We have now announced 13 races in the revised calendar and expect to get to between 15 and 18 races in 2020. The newly added three races bring exciting circuits that were not part of the original 2020 calendar. Portimão in Portugal will be a completely new circuit. While we welcome back Imola and Nürburgring that have hosted world championships in the past. Unfortunately, due to the fluid nature of the ongoing pandemic, it will not be possible for us to race in the Americas this season, but we look forward to being back in 2021. We expect to release the final details of the 2020 calendar in the coming weeks. While we've been extremely focused on 2020 season, we continue to progress the business for the long- term. We reached a long-term exclusive rights agreement with Sky Deutschland beginning in 2021.
Sky Deutschland will provide fans in Germany with full coverage of every Grand Prix and include Germany's first 24/7 channel dedicated to Formula One. We also announced agreements in Austria with ServusTV and ORF, and in Russia with Match TV. We're in the process of finalizing the last couple of TV deals for 2021. We've also continued to strengthen and expand our commercial partnerships. We believe our planned race calendar of 15-18 races will be able to satisfy the vast majority of our contracted sponsorship revenue in 2020. To name a few recent updates, Liqui Moly, the globally renowned vehicle care products experts, upgraded to an official sponsor for the next three years. Adapting to the new reality, we partnered with Zoom to deliver the first-ever virtual Paddock Club experience.
Beginning with the race in Hungary, guests are treated to a range of experiences, we're working to expand this offering to our global partners and F1 teams. Furthering the fan outreach, we announced a new podcast series with Spotify. Paddock Pass is hosted by Will Buxton, in these exclusive episodes, he will speak to drivers, team principals, and legends of the sport. On the video front, following on the strong results of the first two seasons of the Netflix show, Drive to Survive, the film crews are already at work filming the third season. We are also partnered with YouTube to live stream the Eifel Grand Prix in Nürburgring, Germany. This is the first time fans from select European countries will be able to view the entire Grand Prix weekend for free on the Formula One YouTube channel.
Before our return to the track, we took the opportunity to revisit the cost cap of $175 million announced last October. The new cost cap of $145 million will be introduced in 2021, will further reduce to $140 million in 2022 and $135 million in 2023. This will advance the objective to improve the competition and action on the track, at the same time, make the sport a healthier and more attractive business for all. With our return to racing and the revised cost cap, we have moved to finalized discussions around the Concorde Agreement. We've had productive conversations with all constituents, we look forward to completing this agreement in the near future and solidifying the sport for the longer- term. We've also been focused on the corporate operations of Formula One.
During the second quarter, we furloughed over 50% of our workforce, but we're pleased to bring back the majority of our employees with our return to racing. We also focused on our balance sheet and announced an amendment to our debt covenants, which provides flexibility until March 31, 2022. These actions, along with the diligent approach to our spending, will enable us to weather this difficult time. Given all the challenges in 2020, we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish and expect to accomplish. We've been in regular contact with the majority of our commercial partners to discuss the reduced race calendar and the expectation that many of our races will not have fans. Clearly, this is going to impact our revenue in multiple areas, but is still dependent on how the remainder of the year unfolds.
We appreciate and value our long-term partners, and we expect to resolve any contractual issues in a fair and straightforward manner. We're confident in our plans for 2020 and look forward to 2021, when we think we can return to our prior expectations for Formula One. Now I'll turn the call back to Greg.
Thank you, Chase. Thank you, Brian. Given the ongoing pandemic, we have decided that Liberty's Investor Day this year will be virtual and will happen over two days because no one, as much as we love Zoom, should have to be on a video call for that long. On Thursday, November 19th, we will cover Liberty Media and Liberty TripAdvisor. On Friday, November 20th, we will include Qurate, GCI Liberty, and Liberty Broadband. We'll run from 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. Eastern on both days. More details will be provided on our website, but please mark your calendars. As always, we appreciate your continued interest in Liberty Media, and again, hope you all stay safe and healthy. With that, operator, I'd love to open the floor for questions.
Thank you, sir. Just a quick reminder, ladies and gentlemen, it is star one on your telephone keypad if you wish to ask a question on today's call. We will now take our first question from Ben Swinburne from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning. Chase, could you talk about, I know you're obviously laser focused on 2020, but I'd love to ask you a couple questions about next season. On the sponsorship front, are you able to give us any sense for how you're thinking that is coming together for next year? I don't know if you're willing to be this specific, but I'm trying to figure out if 2021 could be higher than 2019 or if the sort of global recession pressure on corporate spending has maybe changed the direction of that revenue line. Secondly, I'm wondering if you're thinking about a later start to the season next year, just because of obviously what's going on with the virus and sort of continued timelines around vaccination. I'm just curious if that's an option that you guys are exploring yet, or if it's too early.
I just had one for Greg. Greg, you again re-emphasized the discount at Liberty SiriusXM, the buyback. Did you guys buy back any shares between June 16th and whenever you filed the 10-Q? I guess we'll see what the number looks like on the share count front, because it doesn't look like you did, and I didn't know if that was because you were boxed out or some other reason. Just trying to reconcile the comment with the buyback. Thanks, guys.
Okay. Let me answer the second part first because it sort of sets up the first part. We are planning a 2021 season that looks pretty much like what we would have expected it to look like the beginning of this year. Obviously, we qualify that with, we don't have any better visibility than anybody else what this virus is going to look like as we go forward. I do think one has to realize, I think we're about five months into the virus, and our season in March would be still seven months away. There's a long time, and conversations on vaccines and treatments and testing and the like will obviously continue to evolve. We also obviously race in 22 countries, we deal with a much bigger mixed bag of issues throughout this.
We are planning on 2021 that looks like we would expect it, which probably will be a 22-race calendar. A calendar that probably starts and finishes about when our calendar has. We may make it so there's a little more space in the front end of it, of the calendar, and the second half is a little busier, so we've got a little more flexibility built into it. I think that's probably a tweak to it, not a real restructuring. Clearly, as this goes along we'll know more, and there's always the possibility we make some adjustments as we go forward. At this point, we're planning races that will have fans. We've been in touch with most of our events. Again, nobody has visibility to this. We'll obviously have a lot of sports ahead of us.
What will the NBA and NHL do as they get to next season? What do the soccer leagues, football leagues in Europe do as their seasons get going? I think we do have the benefit of a lot of things that will be in front of us as templates around the world. I guess it relates to the sponsorship side. I think things went pretty quiet just in the early stages, I'd say the first month or two of the virus period, I think as people adjusted to working from home and engaging in a different way, obviously virtually and connecting and the like. We actually feel pretty good about the traction in the last few months. We're actually in a pretty good place in terms of renewals. I think sponsorship is a place we clearly believe there's real room to grow.
I think we were talking before the virus hit about the headway we were making. We acknowledged we probably weren't as far along in the growth as we expected, but still felt as strong as ever about the growth opportunities for us. The interest is good. We continue to expect growth in that. Again, our foundation's in a pretty good place. The renewal we have, we're in advanced discussions that are very positive. The interest from new parties is strong. As much as everything's fluid, we feel pretty good about continuing to get to where we think we should be in the sponsorship world, and the opportunity we have in front of us.
Thank you.
Okay, Ben, I'm happy to try and answer the other. We were blacked out for most of Q2 during the rights offering, we had our normal course blackouts prior to our earnings. The most of this is disclosed or more details in the press release. I know we just dropped it on you, if you look in that, I think it's outlined.
Okay, thanks guys.
Our next question will come from Bryan Kraft from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask two questions. First, on Formula One. Working capital usage has been essentially neutral year- to- date. Do you expect that to change at all in the second half based on what you know at this point in time? Related to that, if the season were to be unexpectedly cut shorter than the 15 and 18 race plan, would you be in a position where you'd have to refund fees collected for this season already? For example, those from the broadcast rights holders. Just trying to get a sense for what the potential cash need could be relative to the cash need you have on the balance sheet currently. Then my other question is on the strategic front.
Greg, if you were to increase your equity stake in iHeart to something closer to the 50% level that has received antitrust approval, what are the reasons that you would be doing it through Liberty Sirius versus SiriusXM? Maybe the pros and cons of those two options. Thank you.
Chase, do you want to start there?
Yeah. Sure. I think largely, in terms of payments received from parties, not in all cases, but I'd say in the majority of our cases, we are aligning payments more with the races. Payments which would've been scheduled throughout the race season that would've started in March, obviously with the race season starting in July, it's a different start and a different pace to it. Not in all cases, but I think in the majority of it, we've moved those payments to be more aligned with the races.
I'm not saying there is no impact, but certainly the impact, if we didn't get to our targeted races from people who've paid us for those races would be limited, just because of, again, how we're sort of looking for payments to come in more against the races as they're actually occurring. Yeah. I think in terms of working capital, I must say, I don't really probably get that granular. Because we've got so many moving parts, there's probably some working capital involved. Obviously, first to second quarter, we did much in the way of operations. It probably limits the amount of working capital that we're generating when we're not operating the business in the third and fourth quarter. We'll obviously be operating the business, which will create working capital.
I mean, clearly there's an impact on our revenues. Our working capital is not what it would be in a normal year, just because as our results are, what they'd be in a normal year. I don't actually With all those moving parts, we've got a liquid enough balance sheet, it's not probably one of the things I forecast or particularly, I think we might manage our payments and receipts. Focus more on that than the working capital, which would be probably reasonably ordinary course for a reduced level of operations.
Yeah. I'd like to just add on Chase's comment before I address iHeart. Obviously, one of the reasons we did the reattribution was to put a bulletproof balance sheet in place at Formula One and at the holdco. I think we've done that. I echo Chase's points. We're very much focused on getting through 2020 and set ourselves in place that no matter what happened in 2020, we were prepared to try and get back to normal course, which we're reasonably confident for 2021. Turning briefly to iHeart. There are some issues there that are worth thinking about for the long- term, which is, Sirius, a fast-growing entity than iHeart. How much do you want to consolidate that? How would you want to account for that? There are a lot of operating synergy potential there.
Candidly, given the opportunities we have at SiriusXM, we like iHeart, but we don't feel in any rush to do that. We've all noted the discount. We've all noted some of the things that Sirius wants to do about getting to 80. We've noted some of the things that Sirius wants to do about potentially in podcasts. Those haven't been big, and I don't expect they're going to be huge going forward. The point being, there are demands on the cash flow of Siri and opportunities on the cash flow of Siri that are interesting. iHeart is a great management team. We like the business. Clearly advertising is challenged in this environment, and we want to watch and see what happens.
Thanks. If I could ask one follow-up on that, Greg, the antitrust approval, I assume that applies to either scenario, whether it would be acquired through Sirius or iHeart up to the 50%, is that correct?
I think you meant through Liberty Sirius or Sirius. Yes. I understand.
Sorry, yes.
we treat it as one entity for that purpose.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Our next question will come from David Karnovsky from JPMorgan.
All right. Thank you. Just two for Chase. On race promotion in the past, I think you've discussed having a long list of locations that want to hold a Grand Prix. Just wondering if you think the pandemic will impact the willingness of local governments to subsidize and support races, either to the negative because of pressure to finances or maybe to the positive even because of a need to attract tourism in the future. Then just for this season, assuming a limited number of fans are allowed at some races, can you discuss how this would impact the promoter fee? Would this be prorated based on how much of the venue you're able to fill? Thanks.
Sure. In terms of race promotion, certainly in discussions to date, which are obviously therefore beyond this year. They're not 2020. We've certainly had races inserted as one-offs. Some of them I mentioned in the early comments, like Portugal and Imola. On the longer-term traditional type arrangements, we've actually got our calendar pretty well set. We haven't announced 2021 just because of the focus on 2020, but we're close to sort of finalizing 2021. We've got a couple agreements to complete where we sort of have the business terms agreed. We've got to paper it. There's been no impact on that. Obviously, those are discussions that would've began well before the virus, and has certainly not had any negative impact.
I think in some ways, the importance of getting back to the world as we know it and re-energizing actually seems to be in some ways a bigger topic, the positive you're talking about as opposed to the negative. In the short- term, everybody still wrestles with how long is the virus going to last. I think there is a broad-based assumption that the world has to continue to recover and everything has to start to operate. In some ways, there's a pent-up demand for this and obviously an importance we have of places that want to attract people and the like, the types of cities we're in that obviously are very Where tourism and their general businesses and exposure to the world is important probably makes our platforms more important. The conversation and interest, we've not seen any negative given our calendar for 2021.
The conversations we have right now are probably early stage because they're not for next year. We've got next year, as I said, pretty much done, and we're just finishing the agreements for it. We're not pushing 2022 and beyond, but there are still parties that we've talked to that, again, have not in any way Their interest hasn't diminished. We're not into those sort of agreements. We're not really into business terms when we're talking a race that's two or three years away because it's early stage, so you're really talking more about the opportunity and what you can do with it and things around it. It's not the detailed substance. The agreements we have this year, it is such a unique year. They're all over the place. You have, obviously We don't expect fans at the first race.
We think there's potential for a very small number of fans. It's probably now Mugello. Probably increasing, not still on races on the latter part of the schedule. We hope to have fans, as many as possible. In some places, the governments want to get a little closer to the date to determine what the situation is. Our deals, our agreements vary all over and to some degree depend are these long-term partners or one-off partners? There are a lot of moving parts. Some of them do have variables in it. Again, it differs in each place, which is always the case with our agreements.
Thank you.
We'll now take our next question from James Ratcliffe from Evercore. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking the questions. One for Greg and one for Chase, if I could. Greg, following up on iHeart, as I recall from last November at the Analyst Day, John said something to the effect of he couldn't really see value in buying things at the moment given valuation levels unless there were synergies. Clearly, there would be a lot of synergies if you owned all of iHeart and could combine it with SiriusXM. Can you talk about what sorts of synergies you could potentially capture owning a minority non-controlling stake in iHeart? Then for Chase, around some of the broadcast renewals, it sounds like you're pretty happy with what you've gotten in Germany and Austria, I guess Russia, and I think Scandinavia as well.
As you work to finalize an agreement in Spain, sounds like adding Carlos Sainz to Ferrari and Fernando Alonso coming back should be positive for that. Can you provide any additional commentary on what you've been hearing from your broadcast partners over the last few months? How are you viewing the market for sports rights, specifically across some of the most important European markets? Thanks.
Sure.
I'll go first, Chase.
Okay.
On iHeart, I think you point out that a minority stake would make some of the issues around synergies more difficult, but I don't necessarily think impossible in terms of how you share advertising sales, how you share digital build-outs. There are clearly ways we could work together. There are probably ways we can work together even without an acquisition, but they get easier to the degree you have common ownership, and the easiest of all is if you're 100%. I think your point is fair. The one thing I'd note is John talked about valuations. Obviously, valuations have come down, but the business is more challenged as well. We would weigh all that, and ultimately, the goal would be to get to full consolidation, whether that takes longer or it's not something we could do out of the blocks.
As I said, right now we're pausing on all of that. Sorry. Go ahead, Chase.
Okay. I guess I'd say in terms of the broadcast landscape, and probably to some degree because our deals are multi-year deals and even now there are deals that start in 2021, so we're not in discussions about deals that are 2020. Again, are multi-year deals. The virus has actually not had a I probably can't say it's a positive, but it has not really had a material impact on the interest in the sport. I think events continue to have a unique value. I think we continue to see that varies by country. I think in general, you'd probably say the pay side of the world, given its subscription base is slightly different than an ad-supported service.
Obviously, the pay sports services had to navigate through not having sports, but I think as they come back, it probably reinforces the importance of those events on the sports platforms. I would actually say in the broadcast world, and again, probably just the nature of the long-term agreements, it hasn't had a significant impact on the discussions we would've been having pre-COVID-19. I think everybody has some anxieties about what the short- term looks like. Again, I think a degree of confidence, particularly with all the increased discussions about being at home and what you do at home. Obviously, watching things on a screen it's become more important than ever.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Brian Russo from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. This one's about SiriusXM. Greg, in one of your past analyst days, I think you made a case that the TV and film business has challenges because certain technology companies have entered the space, and they're spending more on content because they either have alternative ways to monetize or they're not valued on near-term profits. Seems like a similar case could be made for spoken word content in the audio space. I'd love to get your view on why this may or may not be a good analogy, and what the implications could be for Sirius's content cost. Thanks.
I think it's an imperfect analogy. There are certainly elements that might be worth considering. You've seen the case where Spotify has gotten enormous benefit from the perceived moves they've made. Not the perceived moves, but the value of the perceived moves, or the perceived value, rather, the moves they've made in podcasts. I guess I'd note that there's a certain base level that is music that all players have. There's a certain amount of differentiated content, and if you look at the amount of differentiated content that Sirius already has, it pretty much exceeds most, whether it be in sports from ESPN to things like Formula One Group, or whether it be the fact that you can listen to the NFL, MLB. You can listen to business, CNBC. You've got comedy.
I would say there's already a breadth of differentiated content in SiriusXM, which is one of the reasons we've been able to charge a premium and continue to have growth and very low churn, enviable churn against those other services, and position ourselves very well. Our view is, I think Jim Meyer has elegantly stated, and I totally agree, is podcasting is going to be an interesting part of the business. It will have some percentage of the listening. It will still be fairly low. It's going to be important, but it'll be a fairly low percentage. We are in the early innings of that which has gone to podcasts.
There are certainly some of the people that have been signed to exclusives that have an audience, but there is so much content that's high-value content that hasn't yet come onto podcasts that we believe will come onto podcasts. A lot of it will be based on helping those people get onto the podcast world, which is one of the reasons we went out and did Stitcher and did Simplecast. We think the value is there in podcasting. I think the market may have overreacted in a positive fashion to the moves that others have made in podcasting. We'll see. I don't think this is like the complete world of video, where you're going to have guys with other I don't have them playing a big way.
People with other outside monetization schemes have not entered in force because they can sell some other kind of service or product and monetize through podcasts. That's not what Spotify is trying to do, and that's not where the ball has been. So far it's been a much less differentiated business, and we already have a lot of unique content, so we'll see.
Got you. Appreciate that. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from John Tinker from Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Switching gears to baseball. Could you just discuss, given that I think you had some rent deferrals, what the attendance has been like at the stores and the restaurants at The Battery Atlanta? Secondly, given you are wonderfully on time and on schedule on the build-out, which kind of seems means you'll be sitting in a large tower watching the All-Star Game next year. You sold some, I think, the rental apartments. How do you sort of see the properties part of your portfolio?
I'll answer the second part, and I'll let Brian, if you could, Brian, speak to the first about where we are at The Battery. Look, I think we try and make a decision about uses of the capital and how it gets valued. Depending on where we stand, we might or might not, and what kind of valuation we would get. We might or might not try and liquidate some of The Battery portfolio. Given what's going on in real estate, both office potential and retail potential, I'm not sure that's as likely in the near- term, though if we do get a fully leased-up office space, maybe that'll be different. We are obviously not in a downtown urban corridor, which seems to me the most challenged or where people have questions about the future. We may actually be a beneficiary of some de-densification. We'll see.
I think we'll look and see what kind of lease-up we get, what kind of valuation we get, and make a decision on what are the alternative uses of capital. Brian, could you address where we are in some of the rents?
Yeah. With The Battery, as Georgia started to open up, The Battery started to open up. They started with takeout at a limited number of venues. They're almost fully open now. There's in-person dining at quite a few of the venues. They're following various safety protocols to make sure their patrons are safe and everything's clean. The Omni's looking up fairly well, especially those corner rooms that can see into the park, as you might expect. The Aloft just opened recently. Everything's going pretty well at The Battery.
Thank you.
Thanks, John.
Our next question comes from Jason Bazinet from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
I just had a question for Mr. Carey. In general, investors like you as a manager, they like the Formula One asset, and they like what you're doing with the asset. You've said since inception that you're very focused on the long- term, making decisions on long-term value creation, not short- term. The debate that's emerged is sort of when the summation of all the decisions that you've been made will sort of manifest themselves in something that's sort of obvious to the buy side in terms of a better EBITDA number, materially better. My question is, based on everything that you know and based on that sort of potential race schedule that you saw in 2021, do you think 2021 could be the year?
As you sort of add up all of the puts and takes and decisions, does it feel more like a 2022 or 2023 sort of story? Thank you.
Look, in reality, if you go back, at the beginning of this year, as we said. Maybe I'll go all the way back. You're never exactly where you planned, but we were on pretty much the track we had laid out three years ago. We talked about 2017 and 2018 being foundation building. I know we tried to be clear that it was going to take a couple of years. We've been clear what we stepped into and what we had to do and what we had to put in place. I know the market always thinks you build a foundation in three months. 2017 and 2018 were really building the long-term foundation. I think we had a real step forward.
It's just the first step in 2019, and we have been clear, we were expecting 2020 to be another significant step forward and 2021 to continue to be a further step forward. We were very much, I think, on a trajectory to moving, and again, it wasn't going to be in 12 months, but moving to delivering the type of growth that got us to a place. You're never done, it's not like we're done in 2023 or something. I think, clearly, we've got initiatives like new cars in 2022 and other initiatives. We've talked about countries that to grow the sport in that are 5- 10 years. China and the U.S. are clearly not payoffs that happen in two or three years.
I think we felt, in the beginning of this year, we were on a good track, and we've got a pretty predictable business model. Ex the virus, we were very much moving to deliver the type of growth, long-term growth, that we had talked about. Obviously, the virus turned it all on its head. We, at this point, we're planning on a 2021 that is probably not quite, but pretty close to the 2021 we would have planned. Planning anything in the virus era obviously got complexities, because we don't know what are going to be the issue in terms of limitations on fan attendance and things. We do believe the world, again, has to start to function in the ways we know the world in.
We do believe 2021 can be pretty close to back to on the curve or on the slope we had planned for the business. Again, none of us have the visibility we'd like to the virus. I guess excluding unexpected continuing encumbrances from the pandemic, we expect in 2021 and 2022 to be largely back on the curve we would've been on from sitting at the beginning of this year with 2019 being a year of growth and 2020 being a significant further year of growth.
Very helpful. Thank you.
The next question from Zachary Silver from B. Riley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Okay, great. Thanks for taking the question. Two on Formula One. The first is if you could talk about how F1 TV Pro fits into some of the more recent broadcast renewals, also whether you see that as an an opportunity for some of the pay TV partners to be more of a meaningful distribution partner for that DTC service. The second is just on the flyaway races that begin a little later on. They're obviously more demanding from a logistics perspective. If there are any snags, would you be able to pivot back to some of the circuits closer to home? Is there anything contractually that precludes you from doing that? Thanks.
Okay. First, the latter, no, there's not. Which is, again, we haven't announced the last handful of races. We're creating options on all fronts. There's probably some limitation on how late, if something came up and we got canceled a week before the race, that may be more problematic to pivot on that. If we've got adequate time, then we are certainly building in contingencies in all directions. On the latter. In terms of F1 TV Pro, again, it varies by market. Actually, I'd say right now, because for me, the most important thing for F1 TV Pro, beyond getting it quality-wise, and we did have a glitch the very first race, but it's worked well since then, and think we feel we're continuing to get there with the product, is to grow its access to consumers.
In a number of places we are pursuing it more as a partnership and trying to develop ways to have it be something to enhance the experience for a traditional television partner's customer with a product that is geared towards a true enthusiast. It's that extra experience, and work with our partners to have that be something that we can both share in the success of and benefit from. Certainly we've had more discussions on that front. There are places it operates more, countries we certainly continue to operate it more as a standalone alternative for the traditional television. In many ways, in the short- term, the path that I think probably has the best short and long-term opportunities for us is if we can develop it in the right way and the right structure with our partners as an extra dimension.
Then it gives us the optionality as we go forward long- term to how does it fit into a world that obviously is continuing to evolve, certainly the digital side of our world, in many ways, in a positive way, continues to explode the viewership and the engagement. We've got the products we're putting out there. There seems to be no end to the appetite for it, and we just are looking to continue to find ways to enhance and expand that. All those opportunities in that field I think are becoming an increasingly important part of the sport, and it's obvious in all aspects of the content world. It really is becoming, in many ways, when you talk about reach, it really is becoming reach and engagement with fans.
Got it. Thank you, Chase.
Our last question today comes from Kannan Venkateshwar from Barclays. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you. Greg, one quick one on Sirius for you. With the Stitcher acquisition, I mean, historically, Sirius has been anchored more to the used car market, and conversion rates have been linked to that. With the Stitcher acquisition, you now have a brand potentially that can allow Sirius to decouple to some extent from the auto market. Does this really open up opportunities outside the U.S. to a greater extent than has been possible? Is Stitcher potentially an independent brand that can be used in that respect? Thanks.
Thank you for the question. I think we have been expanding in ways outside the car, obviously, for a while. Look at the Pandora acquisition. Your point about being outside the car and outside the U.S. is certainly true with the acquisitions we've made. How much of our content will go outside the U.S., how much does it play? That's an open question. In general, the U.S. market, given the ARPUs, is a more attractive market to operate in. We're cautious about proceeding. We see the benefits of scale outside the U.S., but in general, those markets are in the less attractive markets than the market we're in, partly because of the ARPUs, as I mentioned, and partly because of some of the protections around the DMCA. I think we'll approach that cautiously.
One of the things I would note is certainly our OEM auto partners in particular would love to see us be more global because they would love to see us bundled across all markets when they build cars. They are global players. We will tiptoe outside the United States. We do have some, obviously, in Canada and Mexico already. Historically, Pandora was in some of those English-speaking markets outside the U.S., but we will be cautious in doing that, I would say.
Thank you.
I think that's our last question for the morning. Thank you very much all for joining. Thank you for your continued interest in Liberty, and we look forward to speaking with you again and getting a chance to have you participate in the Investor Day, if so remotely. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Be well, everybody.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.