Liberty “very confident” of regulatory approval for MotoGP takeover

The American firm announced on Monday (local time) that it was set to buy an 86 percent stake in Dorna Sports from Bridgepoint Capital, valuing the business at €4.2 billion (approximately AUD 6.9 billion).

The deal would bring the biggest world championships in the respective two- and four-wheel worlds into the same corporate family, something which was not allowed in 2006 when CVC bought F1.

CVC already owned MotoGP at the time and was forced by the European Commission to divest due to concerns over excessive market power, yet Liberty CEO Greg Maffei is confident of avoiding a similar fate.

“We are very confident we will get this through regulators because we believe there is a broad market for sports and entertainment properties, of which both Formula 1 and MotoGP are only a small subset, and the market has continued to change from the time when the market was previously reviewed in a major way,” he said in an investor call held following the announcement of the Liberty-Dorna deal.

“We are going to not treat these as a bundle or try to bring them together in the market.

“These are both separate properties. The things that we are bringing to the table here are not in any way leveraging the two.

“I think it’s pattern recognition and leveraging some of the learnings we’ve had from F1, and some of the opportunity we see to expose MotoGP, not in any way to leverage the two.

“So, I think we are very confident on the regulatory side.”

Liberty Media Chief Legal Officer Renee Wilm affirmed that view, with both noting that the CVC deals were done quickly due to time pressures on the private equity firm.

“The CVC decision, which is almost 20 years old, was never really followed up in terms of any kind of in-depth investigation or appeal process,” noted Wilm.

“They chose to just quickly close and move on. I think whey you factor in that we are going to engage very quickly with the regulators, making all the points that Greg just very clearly articulated, and also just noting a change in the media landscape over the last 20 years, we are pretty confident we can get this done quickly and get the transaction cleared.”

Wilm also told investors that the company “will be filing with the EU. We will also be filing with the UK, Brazil and Australia for anti-trust clearance.

“And secondarily we will be making FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] filings with Spain and Italy.

“We think those should be done pretty quickly, and I think the anti-trust clearance should be done by the end of the year so we can have a Q4 closing.”