Liberty Media CEO Greg Mafei says Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton is interested in buying the MotoGP team after news broke of the American company’s takeover of the series.
In April this year, Formula 1 owner Liberty announced a €4.2 billion deal to buy majority ownership of MotoGP, which it hopes will be completed by the end of 2024 after receiving approval from the European Union’s anti-monopoly committee. .
Last month, Liberty announced that it had sold off $825 million worth of F1 shares to help complete the purchase.
Following the announcement, Mafei said in May that Liberty had received “a lot of interest” from various manufacturers to compete in MotoGP.
In recent months, there have been rumors that Hamilton – a big MotoGP fan – wants to buy Gresinialthough these allegations were later dismissed.
At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference, Mafei said Hamilton had spoken with Liberty about the possibility of buying a premier class team.
“I think MotoGP is an incredibly exciting product”Mafei said.
“Seeing people riding motorcycles at a speed of over 350 km/h per hour is amazing. And overtaking is impressive.”
“It’s an exciting product. Unfortunately, MotoGP is not popular enough in the United Statesand there is interest in this competition all over the world, especially in Asia.”
“But the real heart of it was Spain, Italy, to some extent France. I think there’s an opportunity for that to expand.”
“When we announced it, people immediately contacted us saying they wanted to buy the team,” including names like Luis Hamilton.
“Why? Because they saw what happened in Formula 1 and want to follow.”
“We got major distributors to call and say ‘we want to be involved,’ and unfortunately I had to tell them ‘we really can’t talk about it until we get EU approval’. We’d love to talk when it’s all over.”
Source: www.moto-berza.com
