23XI/Front Row Subpoena Liberty Media for F1 Financial Data

Manami Yamada/Reuters via Imagn Images

Fact discovery is underway as 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports barrel toward an antitrust trial against NASCAR, and on Monday, the two race teams filed a subpoena to Liberty Media Corporation, which owns F1, with the Colorado United States District Court.

According to publicly available court documents, the Plaintiffs (23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports) are requesting financial records from Liberty Media in an effort to help the teams calculate damages using a "yardstick" method to compare the revenue and structure in a competitive racing environment such as F1 to that of NASCAR, which the team's have alleged is operating as a monopoly.

While Liberty Media initially refused to reveal any data to the teams due to undue burden and confidentiality concerns, the teams whittled their initial request to five data categories, and data only between January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2024, which Jeffrey Kessler, the teams' lead attorney explains, "Coincides with [the] start of the NASCAR Cup Series Charter System," which Kessler feels makes the information relevant.

The information that the NASCAR race teams are seeking to compel Liberty Media to issue in response includes revenue shared between F1 and its teams, the formula for splitting those revenues, actual amounts retained/shared, valuations or sale prices of F1 teams, and the Concorde Agreement.

The Concorde Agreement is essentially a document that governs the relationships between F1 and its race teams.

23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports are seeking the information on many legal arguments including the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45, which permits a party to serve a subpoena on a non-party to produce documents.

The teams have until June 30 to compile facts in discovery to build their trial against NASCAR, which is scheduled to begin on December 1.

Having the data from Formula 1, a fellow racing series, would likely bolster the case for 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports, depending on what the data ultimately shows, if they are able to obtain it legally. In addition to F1, the race teams have issued similar motions in New York City US District Court to other professional sporting leagues such as the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Hockey League (NHL).

Without the data from other sporting leagues, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports will have a more difficult time making their case as to why the revenue split between NASCAR and the teams are abnormal in the general sport landscape.