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Personally, I think BE and CVC had the golden financial age from F1 and I doubt it will ever deliver the profitable gains that it did then. My uninformed opinion is based on:
The days of TV promoters globally in a bidding war for TV rights is over
The number of emerging markets and unaccountable promoters with government cash to build tracks and pay whatever F1 wants is declining - are their really a queue of circuits and promoters lining upto pay F1 fees?
I don't see F1 merchandise as a winner - by comparison for example, Premier Leauge football teams have a massive merchandise and shirt sales market, but how many people want to buy a shirt with Premier League on it - F1 is the prermier league but the value in the brands for merchandise is the teams and to a certain extent the drivers, not the 'sport' itself.
In the UK there is a huge decline on teenagers even bothering to learn to drive, they see it as a cost not a rites of passage like to used to be, thereby they have no interest in cars and don't see them as aspirational.
TV viewing generally is falling, streaming is fine but monetising it in the long term is not easy.
In the UK the main broadsheet papers (Times & Telegraph) that put up a paywall have only attracted around 150,000 or so subscribers and their online readership fell 80% when the paywall went up. Compare this to the Evening Standard that sold 250,000 copies when it was a paid for paper, but now has a circulation of 1 million as a free paper. Point I am making it that it doesn't matter how good your 'offer ' is, once you make it harder to access the number fall away.
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