F1 valuations have teams winning on and off the track

Formula 1 is one of the fastest sports on the planet.

And F1 is also one of the fastest-growing leagues as well, and according to new analysis from Sportico, when looking at the ten biggest sporting leagues in the world by revenue, F1 stands out above the rest.

Today, Sportico published its annual F1 team values, finding that the average F1 team is worth $4.55 billion, up 33% over 2025, and when you remove Cadillac, the newest team on the grid, the gain over 2025 is 39%. In addition, the average is up 197% since 2023.

The next-best performing league since then is the NHL at an 85% increase, followed by the NFL with a 81% increase.

Here are the values for all 11 F1 teams, as calculated by our friends at Sportico:

Let’s dive into these numbers a little more.

At the outset, one of the things that jumps out about the F1 team valuations from Sportico is how the sport continues to grow across the board. According to Sportico’s Kurt Badenhausen, the average team value is $4.55 million, up an impressive 33% from a year ago. Sportico also found that the growth in team values in Formula 1 outpaced the growth in team values in the NFL (30%), the NBA (28%), the NHL (16%), MLB (12%), and global soccer clubs (11%).

This growth tracks with how the sport’s leaders view expansion across the globe, and into new international markets to find more fans. Last year I sat down with FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem and we talked about the growth of Formula 1 around the world, as well as in the United States. The United States now has three races on the schedule each year — the Miami Grand Prix, the United States Grand Prix in Austin, and the Las Vegas Grand Prix — and the growth of the sport stateside as well as around the world is a focus for both F1 and the FIA.

“Texas deserved it [said President Ben Sulayem to me about last year’s new contract extension for the United States Grand Prix] and this is a beautiful circuit. It’s one of the pioneers, you see, if you look at Miami that came later and then even Las Vegas, so, this is where in a way it was originated. So to have three long-term events in our calendar of the Formula One championship, it’s very important, the United States is a heavyweight, business is going good, otherwise they will not extend.”

President Ben Sulayem then turned to India and China.

“2.8 billion [people],” pointed out President Ben Sulayem to me last year when I asked him why those two markets were essential for motorsport.

“And then the manufacturers in China are more than anywhere else. So how many do you have there?” asked the FIA President before answering his own question. “27 manufacturers. It’s pretty simple to add up.”

Returning to Sportico’s team valuation analysis, F1 teams generated an estimated $5.2 billion in revenue during the 2025 season, or $523 million per team. That was an increase of 16% over the previous year.

Ferrari’s next Constructors’ Championship will have to wait at least one more season. With Mercedes officially clinching the title at last weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix, it is now closing in on almost two decades since Ferrari last lifted F1’s biggest trophy, which came back in 2008.

But the Scuderia remain winning off the track.

Once again, Ferrari topped Sportico’s list of F1 team values, as it has in every installment over the past four years. According to Badenhausen, Ferrari is worth $8.2 billion, a massive increase over last year’s value, which came in at $6.4 billion. Lewis Hamilton’s arrival for the 2025 season has certainly helped Ferrari from a value standpoint, and the Italian team remains the most valuable in the sport.

And Ferrari is among the most valuable teams in all of sports, checking in at No. 30 among Sportico’s list of global sports teams.

F1 added an 11th team for the 2026 season, as Cadillac joined the grid.

The American-based manufacturer is at the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship standings, still seeking its first point on the grid. And while Cadillac is also at the bottom of Sportico’s F1 team valuation rankings, the sport’s newest team checks in with a value of $2.5 billion, in just the first year of operations.

That comes after Cadillac paid a $450 million dilution fee to the other ten teams just to join the grid, and incurred more than $1 billion in startup costs. According to Sportico the team is on pace to lose $400 million this year, due to the startup costs, and is “likely at least four years away from turning a profit.”

This valuation comes as Sportico is also reporting that Mark Walter, who controls the majority of Cadillac through TWG Global and TWG Motorsport, is considering selling his stake in F1’s newest team.

One of the major conclusions from Sportico is that F1 teams remain “very attractive for investors,” given that annual team revenues are growing much faster for Formula 1 teams than in other major sports properties, and they “still trade at a discount to NFL and NBA teams, based on revenue multiples.”

A reason for that?

Formula 1’s cost cap.

Implemented ahead of the 2021 season, F1 introduced the cost cap, a set of financial regulations that set a ceiling on how much money teams could spend each year in certain categories. Generally speaking, any expense that directly impact performance — such as research and development, car design, manufacturing costs of new parts , and more — falls under the cost cap. This limits how much teams can spend in these categories each season, and was implemented to both make the sport more financially stable, and level the playing field.

Some categories, important ones at that, are excluded from the cost cap. Driver salaries, for example, are excluded, as are the salaries for the top three staff members (which usually includes the Team Principal and the Chief Technical Officer, for example).

Legal, finance, marketing, and sustainability initiative costs are also excluded.

The cost cap was set at $145 million for 2021, reduced to $140 million for 2022 as the sport dealt with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and was reduced again to $135 million for 2023. It remained at that level until this season, when the cost cap ballooned to $215 million, as the sport tweaked the financial regulations to fold in some costs that were previously excluded, including annual depreciation costs for capital expenditures, health and safety costs, and catering costs at races and the team factories.

Sportico found that the cost cap was a major factor in seven of the ten teams turning a profit in 2025. That number would have been eight, but at McLaren a one-time payment of over $130 million to executives, due to the team’s 2024 sale process, meant the team lost $23 million in a year where a profit would have been more than $100 million.

It will be interesting to see if the increased cost cap changes these valuations next year.

However, the cost cap has come under some criticism from a few team principals. Chief among them is James Vowles at Williams, who spoke to The Fast and the Curious podcast just this week about how the cost cap has impacted Williams, which is one of the smaller teams on the grid:

“Before the cost cap came in,” he began, “there were more points scored by teams that weren’t the top four teams. Quite a bit more points scored, actually. Back then, about 10 per cent of the podiums was the teams that were in P5-10, now it’s five%.

”There’s been one winner in 130 grands prix that wasn’t a top four team. One winner, and by the way that was my mistake – you’re welcome. What we’ve done with cost cap is made things better for the top four teams.

”The gap between all of us is bigger than it’s ever been before, the amount of points that we’re scoring is less than ever before, and we are investing – and here’s the kicker – we’re investing huge amounts more than we did before the cost cap.

“That was the difference, Williams wasn’t putting the money in, they didn’t have the money. Force India weren’t putting the money in, they didn’t have the money. The world today is a completely different financial element, but I’m being hurt by trying to catch up to others, which is holding me back. And by the way, not just me, it’s holding back other teams as well.”

Vowles went as far as to make the case that the cost cap has made F1 not “a healthy sport.”

“I think Zak [Brown, McLaren CEO] and Toto [Wolff, Mercedes Team Principal], number one, will always protect their team and their brand. What I’m actually asking everyone to do at this point, it’s a very high level question, is the sport a healthier place if you can’t predict what’s going to happen on any given Saturday or Sunday?

”Right now, the top eight are predictable. It doesn’t matter who you are, the bookies will have them pretty cemented in. The top four teams, the top eight cars, are predictable. They’re predictable this weekend, they were in Austin, they were in Spa, they were in Melbourne. That isn’t a healthy sport.

“A healthy sport is where if we do a better job – and to be clear again, we did not do a good job this winter – but if we’d done a better job with Mercedes or McLaren, we should deserve with the right tools around us to have the ability to go and fight for positions that are a much closer grid. But we don’t right now.”

How do F1 teams stack up when compared to other sports?

Here is what Sportico found:

Of all of Sportico’s findings, this might be the most astounding.

Whether F1 can close the gap on the NFL and the NBA next year remains to be seen, but the main conclusion is this: F1 continues to grow, and that shows no signs of slowing down.

Do any of these valuations surprise you? Do you think F1 will continue to grow? Let us know in the comments, or better yet, download the new SB Nation app at the link below and sound off in the F1 Community.

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