Lewis Hamilton’s attempted MotoGP team purchase uncovered by Liberty Media

Lewis Hamilton in MotoGP? When Liberty Media announced its intended takeover of the motorcycle series earlier this year, CEO Greg Maffei said the seven-time world champion was one of the first people to express interest in buying a team.

Maffei says Hamilton saw the value that Liberty Media brought to F1 after its takeover of the open-wheel sport in 2017 and wanted to be one of the first in line to witness the growth of MotoGP under new management.

Lewis Hamilton expressed interest in buying MotoGP team

Earlier in 2024, Liberty Media announced its intention to purchase an 86% stake of MotoGP promoter Dorna Sports in a deal rumored to amount to around $4.2 billion. The American company is said to have been bolstered by its success in taking over the Formula One Group back in 2017 and is looking to continue building its international sporting profile.

But Greg Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, expanded on Liberty’s goals for MotoGP in a recent Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference — and mentioned a few of the big names already looking to get involved.

When Liberty Media announced its Dorna takeover, Maffei said, “we had immediately people call up and say, I want to buy a team, including people like Lewis Hamilton.

“Why? Because they saw what had happened in Formula 1, and they want to follow.”

After taking over F1, Liberty Media enacted a series of sweeping changes to grow the sport. While most fans can pinpoint examples like Netflix’s Drive to Survive docuseries as being huge for the sport, Liberty had made several steps prior to the show to expand and diversify F1’s global audience — including things as simple as overhauling F1’s website and social media presence to make it feel more contemporary.

As a result, in January of 2023, Forbes estimated that F1’s value had grown a whopping 114% under Liberty’s management.

More on Liberty Media:

👉 Who owns F1? All you need to know about Liberty Media and how F1 has changed since

👉 Liberty Media announce huge $825m F1 stake sale to fund $4.2bn MotoGP takeover

If regulators approve Liberty’s MotoGP takeover, then it stands to reason that the motorcycle-based sport would experience a similar kind of growth. And that’s perhaps what encouraged Hamilton to reach out.

“At a team level, in general, teams don’t cash flow as well,” Maffei said at the Goldman Sachs conference.

“It’s not absolutely true. NFL teams cash flow pretty well, but in general, we’re still too traditional in wanting that cash flow in addition your ability to change the dynamics, to set the stage and do the things that you want are far better, far easier, more manageable.

“Still takes time, but you can get it done at the league level in a way that’s very difficult at the team level.”

In July, SpeedCafe reported that Lewis Hamilton’s name had been linked to MotoGP’s Gresini Racing team.

A MotoGP team purchase would not be out of character for Hamilton, who already owns Extreme E team X44, as well as a stake in the Denver Broncos NFL team.

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