Lewis Hamilton asks about buying sports team after F1 owner's announcement

Lewis Hamilton has shown an interest in acquiring a MotoGP team, Liberty Media chief executive Greg Maffei has said.

Liberty agreed a deal earlier this year to buy a majority stake in MotoGP parent company Dorna Sports and is waiting for European Union approval to complete the deal. The company last month sold £630million worth of shares in Formula 1, which it also owns, to fund the purchase.

But Maffei says there has already been plenty of interest from people and manufacturers who would like to get involved in MotoGP. F1's value has skyrocketed under Liberty ownership and the company plans to do the same with the motorcycle racing championship in the future.

Seven-time F1 champion Hamilton recently said he hasn't "looked that far" into the idea of owning a MotoGP team. But he has been linked with the Gresini Racing outfit and, speaking at a technology conference, Maffei named the Briton as one of those who had reached out.

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He said: "I think MotoGP is an unbelievably exciting product - to see people riding motorcycles at 220mph, six inches from each other is wild. And the overtaking there is incredibly impressive.

"It's an exciting product. It's unfortunately one that is too little known in the United States, and around the world there is interest in Asia and places. But the real heart of it has been Spain, Italy, to some degree France. I think there's an opportunity to expand it.

"When we announced it, we had immediately people call up and say, 'I want to buy a team', including people like Lewis Hamilton. Why? Because they saw what happened in Formula 1 and they want to follow.

"We had major distributors call up and say, 'We want to be involved', and unfortunately I had to tell them, 'We really can't talk about it until we get EU approval'. We'd love to talk once we get it."

If Hamilton was to follow through on his interest and buy a stake in a MotoGP team, it won't be his first experience of owning a sports franchise. Since 2022, he has been a minority stakeholder in the Denver Broncos and has been spotted watching the NFL outfit several times.

Hamilton's Broncos purchase came after he had joined Sir Martin Broughton's failed bid to buy Premier League giants Chelsea. But American Todd Boehly was the one who succeeded to purchase the London club.