Formula 1 News: $200m anti-dilution fee is complete BS

Rodin CEO David Dicker calls the notion that the $200m anti-dilution fee for a new team to enter F1 is too low is complete BS.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

The teams are saying the anti-dilution fee should be around $600 million instead of $200m. Some have said even as high as $1 billion.

As I wrote long ago, Andretti has them by the balls, they just don’t know it yet.

If the teams and F1 stop Andretti, he will likely pursue a billion dollar lawsuit against the teams and Liberty Media and the EU courts are not going to look kindly on F1 and award Andretti a huge financial victory.

Now Rodin CEO David Dicker, who was one of the teams submitting to be the 11th team but failed, has put the calls by the teams to increase the anti-dilution fee in perspective.

“The dilution fee doesn’t make any sense. I don’t want to shit on the teams, but obviously, they’re experts at motor racing, but I’m not so sure about things like finance,” Dicker told Autosport.

“The value of an actual team hasn’t got any input into this whole dilution, and the idea that adding another team is going to even reduce the value of the other teams.

“That’s just crazy town talk. I mean, that’s not going to happen. Why would that happen? And the only area where there’s even sort of potential dilution is in the prize pool. The prize pool is $900 million, as I understand it. So that’s notionally $90 million per team. You bring in another team, you need another $90 million.

“It’s not $200 million or $600 million; all the talk around dilution is just not rational.”

“I read an article the other day where [McLaren CEO] Zak Brown was quoted as basically saying, ‘Yeah, we’d get $70 million or something on my plan and that’d be great’,” explained Dicker.

“So, that’s got nothing to do with growing the sport or the good of the sport. And let’s face it, the teams were basically a financial basket case until the Liberty guys brought in the budget cap.

“They couldn’t operate the things in a decent financial way. It’s only Liberty and the FIA that’s forced them to be financially prudent.

“Now, Formula 1’s actually worth money. Teams can actually make money. And they’re all acting as if it was all somehow their idea, which we all know is completely untrue. They would just spend and spend and spend until there wasn’t any money left.”