The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), motor racing’s global governing body, has signed a bilateral agreement with the Formula One Group for a new Concorde Agreement, which dictates the revenue split for the sport’s broadcast and marketing income.
The previous edition of the confidential agreement expired at the end of last year and following months of negotiations the FIA and Formula One Group announced in July that the framework of a new contract had been agreed upon.
The FIA said today that this agreement has now come into force for the period spanning 2013 to 2020, following the approval of the respective governing bodies of the signatory parties.
The FIA said in a statement: “This agreement provides the FIA with significantly improved financial means to pursue its regulatory missions and to reflect the enhanced role undertaken by the FIA in the motor sport. The parties have agreed a strong and stable sporting governance framework which includes the Formula One Group, the FIA and the participating teams. The agreement lays down solid foundations for the further development of the FIA Formula One World Championship. Now that the agreement is operative, the parties will move towards the conclusion of a multi-party Concorde agreement.”
The new Concorde Agreement must still be agreed by F1’s commercial rights-holder, Formula One Management, along with the FIA and the sport’s 11 teams.
FOM is part of the Formula One Group, whose chief executive Bernie Ecclestone currently has bilateral deals in place with all the teams, with the exception of Marussia. The Reuters news agency said that a final deal could still be some way off.
“The next step is to get the FIA, FOM (Formula One Management) and 11 teams around a table,” one senior team official told the news agency. “At the moment we have 10 bilateral agreements with the teams and some kind of MoU (memorandum of understanding) between the FIA and the commercial rights-holder.”