Credit ratings agency Fitch has become more confident in Formula 1’s financial health, upgrading its outlook on the sport’s parent company, Delta Topco, from Stable to Positive.
In practice, that means Fitch now believes there’s a realistic chance of a full credit rating upgrade in the near future, a signal that lenders and investors typically read as the business getting stronger, not weaker.
Fitch affirmed Delta Topco’s existing Long-Term Issuer Default Rating at BB, and its BB+ rating on associated senior secured debt, alongside the improved outlook.
Both BB and BB+ sit within what is known as “sub-investment grade” or “high yield” territory, below the BBB- threshold that marks the boundary of investment grade.
That does not mean F1 is considered a poor credit risk. Companies across sport, media and entertainment routinely carry ratings in this range, and BB specifically reflects a business Fitch views as fundamentally sound but carrying meaningful debt relative to its earnings.
The distinction matters mainly for the interest rates F1 pays to borrow, and for how comfortable institutional investors are holding its debt.
What makes the timing notable is that it comes despite F1 losing two races from its 2026 calendar after the Gulf Air Bahrain and STC Saudi Arabian Grands Prix were both cancelled this year because of the Iran-US conflict.
Fitch’s central forecast still expects Formula 1’s debt relative to earnings to fall steadily over the next three years, assuming a normal 24-race calendar returns in 2027.
Fitch went further in stress-testing that resilience, modelling a more severe scenario in which the Qatar Airways Qatar and Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grands Prix, both scheduled for December, are also cancelled.
Even under that reduced calendar, Fitch expects F1’s finances to hold steady rather than deteriorate.
The rating action credited F1’s revenue structure directly for that resilience.
Around 80 per cent of the sport’s annual revenue comes from multiyear contracts with media companies, race promoters and corporate sponsors, with a contracted revenue pipeline of $15.9 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2026.
Fitch forecasts pre-dividend free cash flow margin at 13 per cent in 2026, despite the disrupted calendar, rising to average 17 per cent across 2026 to 2029.
Revenue is forecast to grow 2 per cent in 2026, before jumping 13 per cent in 2027 as the calendar normalises, with mid-single-digit growth expected in 2028 and 2029.
The agency also expects F1’s EBITDA margin, a measure of underlying profitability, to improve from 24 per cent in 2026 to 26 per cent by 2028, while dividend payments to Liberty Media are projected to run between $300 million and $500 million a year through 2029, weighted toward the later years of that window.
What this ultimately signals is a business that Wall Street now views as strong enough to absorb genuine geopolitical shocks without its underlying financial trajectory changing course.
Race cancellations of this kind would once have been treated as a serious threat to a sports body’s finances; here, they barely dent Fitch’s central forecast.
That resilience is precisely what F1 has been building toward since Liberty Media’s takeover, prioritising long-term contracted revenue over reliance on any single race, market or sponsor.
If Fitch does move to a full ratings upgrade in the coming months, as this outlook revision suggests it might, it would mark F1 stepping closer to investment-grade territory entirely on the strength of its own commercial model.
