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Apple bids for Formula 1 rights in US following success of Brad Pitt film

iPhone-maker is challenging Disney’s ESPN to screen racing series

Apple is in talks to acquire the US rights to screen Formula 1 as the tech giant chases the success of its hit movie based on the race car series and delves further into showing live sport.

The iPhone maker is challenging Disney’s ESPN — Formula 1’s current American broadcaster — when the broadcast contract becomes available next year, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The interest comes as F1 starring Brad Pitt becomes the company’s first big box office success since moving into the business of making original content for its Apple TV+ streaming service.

Formula 1’s US owners, Liberty Media, are hoping the film, along with Netflix’s Drive to Survive documentary series, will have increased the value of the rights for its races by attracting younger, female and American audiences to the sport.

F1 has generated roughly $300mn at the box office making it Apple’s highest-grossing film, while representing a pivot into producing mainstream blockbusters after commercial disappointments with Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon.

Apple has previously made moves into the live sports streaming, striking a deal with Major League Baseball in 2022 to broadcast games on Friday nights, as well as a broader deal with North America’s Major League Soccer.

The race car series makes in the region of $85mn a year from its existing broadcast partner ESPN. F1 also streams live races on its own streaming service in the US, charging fans directly.

Analysts at Citi have previously estimated that F1’s next US broadcast deal could be worth $121mn a year, although that was before the release of the F1 film. Its total global media rights revenue grew almost 8 per cent to about $1.1bn in 2024.

F1 is yet to make a decision on its future broadcasting arrangements and ESPN may yet retain the rights, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

ESPN had an exclusive period of time to negotiate a deal without competition from other bidders. However, that window ended without a deal last year, opening the process to rivals. Other bidders are also expected to seek the rights.

The US is a priority market for Liberty Media, which has added Miami and Las Vegas to its race calendar in recent years, complementing its grand prix in Austin, Texas. Cadillac, the US brand backed by billionaire financier Mark Walter’s TWG Motorsports and General Motors, will join the grid as the 11th team in 2026.

F1’s audiences on ESPN have doubled from 554,000 viewers a race in 2018, the year after Liberty Media took over Formula 1, to roughly 1.1mn in 2024. In the first 10 events this year, F1 averaged 1.3mn viewers, with record viewership for Australia, China, Monaco, Spain, Canada and Austria.

Apple does not break down revenue for Apple TV+ and its production company Apple Studios, instead including them in its $100bn-a-year services revenue, which encompasses products such as the App Store, iCloud and Apple Pay.

Apple, Liberty Media and Formula 1 declined to comment.

Sunday’s assault by the group was the first since December, prompting concerns about an escalation

The cost of insuring vessels passing through the Red Sea has surged since Houthi militants resumed attacks on commercial vessels, threatening to disrupt global trade, according to the world’s largest insurance broker.

Premiums charged for war risks in the stretch of water between Africa and Asia rose to as much as 1 per cent of the overall value of a ship by Tuesday, from a maximum 0.4 per cent before Sunday’s attack on a Greek-owned cargo ship.

Marcus Baker, head of marine and cargo for Marsh McLennan, said this meant the cost of cover for a $100mn vessel had increased from about $300,000 per voyage to as much as $1mn.

The attack on the Magic Seas, a dry bulk carrier owned by Greece’s Stem Shipping, was followed on Monday by an assault on the Eternity C, a bulk carrier that sails under a Liberian flag.

“The dynamics [in shipping insurance prices] are stranger than I’ve seen before,” Baker told the Financial Times, noting how previous attacks had prompted ships to take a longer route by going around the Cape.

“There seems to have been a very quick escalation in activity from the Houthis. It is expected that these rates move further upwards if shipping continues to use the corridor for transit.”

The Red Sea is one of the world’s most important trade chokepoints and an escalations of attacks — in addition to raising insurance costs for commercial vessels — would risk higher oil prices and disruption to the flow of goods.

The attack on the Magic Seas was the first such assault by the Iran-backed Houthis since December. The militants said the ship had sunk after it was attacked with gunfire, rocket-propelled grenades and maritime drones. 

A Houthi spokesperson said in a statement posted on X that the attack was in response to “repeated violations by the owning company [of the vessel] of the ban on entering the ports of occupied Palestine [Israel].”

Eternity C, which is operated by Cosmoship, a Greek ship manager, was attacked with sea drones and rocket-propelled grenades fired from manned speedboats, according to Reuters, which also reported that three seafarers were killed.

The Houthis have not claimed responsibility for that assault.

In response to Sunday’s assault on the Magic Seas, which Stem Shipping’s chief executive said had left the crew “terrified”, Israel announced that it had “forcefully” struck Houthi-linked targets, including the ports of Hodeidah, Al-Salif and Ras Isa and a power station.

The Galaxy Leader at anchor in May 2025 © Planet Labs

Israel also hit the Galaxy Leader, a car-carrier attacked and seized in the first Houthi attack on merchant shipping in November 2023. 

The Israel Defense Forces said in a post on X that the ship had been “fitted with a radar system to track international vessels for terror operations”.

Why EU capitals are irate at German car swap scheme to swerve US tariffs

Driving through

The German car industry has been pushing hard for a quick trade deal to win tariff relief from Trump — but the effort is backfiring as other member states fear they will pay the price, writes Andy Bounds.

Context: The EU is nearing an “agreement in principle” with Washington that would leave most tariffs in place while talks continue.

But Berlin is pushing hard to get a deal on cars, which currently are covered by tariffs of 27.5 per cent, thanks to the extra 25 per cent Trump imposed on “national security” grounds in March.

Advised by carmakers, whose bosses have been to see Trump in person, Germany has devised an innovative scheme — described as “delusional” by an unnamed commission official.

European carmakers would be allowed to export one car tariff-free to the US for each car they make on American soil and export.

The beneficiaries would be BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which export some US production to the EU. But many carmakers from other member states, such as France and Slovakia, do not.

Several member states in a meeting on Monday expressed doubts about the move which would penalise their companies, according to three people briefed on the discussions. They also said it would incentivise businesses to move production to the US, costing jobs.

“Between the commission and member states, there’s lots of anger at the German car industry for undermining negotiations,” one EU diplomat said. Member state representatives are meeting again to discuss the issue today.

Germany, the biggest exporter to the US, is very exposed to tariffs. The German car industry accounts for about 5 per cent of the country’s GDP.

ACEA, the car industry body, said that carmakers were losing “single-digit millions” daily. German auto exports to the US fell by 13 per cent in April and 25 per cent in May from the same months the previous year, German industry body VDA said this week.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is still pressing the commission to do a quick deal, which leaves 10 per cent tariffs across the board in place, even after Trump extended a talks deadline from July 9 to August 1.

“Time is money,” his spokesperson said on Monday.

US pharma giant seeks to expand footprint beyond cancer treatment as its biggest product nears patent cliff

Merck is nearing a roughly $10bn deal to buy lung disease-focused biotech Verona Pharma, the US drugmaker’s biggest acquisition in two years as it expands in respiratory medicine.

The acquisition of Verona would enhance the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company’s pipeline with the addition of Ohtuvayre, a medicine approved in the US to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which analysts predict could generate peak annual sales of nearly $4bn by the mid-2030s. The drug is also in trials as a potential treatment for other lung conditions.  

The acquisition, which would be Merck’s largest since its $10.8bn takeover of Prometheus Biosciences in 2023, is the latest example of a pharmaceutical group targeting a biotech with an approved product already generating revenue to fill the gap left by blockbuster drugs coming off patent.

Merck’s cancer treatment Keytruda, the world’s top-selling drug with nearly $30bn a year in revenue, is coming off patent and being hit by US government price-setting rules as soon as 2028. Shares in Merck, known as MSD outside North America, are down 35 per cent over the past year, giving it a market value of $203bn as of market close on Tuesday.

As part of the deal, Merck would pay $107 per American depository share for Verona, a 23 per cent premium to the biotech’s closing price on Tuesday, according to three people familiar with the matter. The takeover values the respiratory disease-focused biotech at about $10bn.

The talks between the companies were at an advanced stage and a deal could be announced as soon as Wednesday, provided there are no last-minute hitches, the people added. Merck declined to comment, while Verona did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Verona’s Ohtuvayre, which launched in the US last year after being approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of COPD in adult patients last year, has got off to a winning start, with 25,000 prescriptions filled by the end of the first quarter, exceeding analysts’ expectations.

Merck’s acquisition would fast track the international launch of the drug in countries outside the US, the people added. It comes as Merck gears up for a blitz of product launches, with plans to roll out more medicines over the next five years than it has ever done in that timeframe in its history.

Ohtuvayre was the first completely new inhaled medicine approved as a maintenance treatment for the 8.6mn US patients with COPD, a leading cause of death that destroys lung tissue and function, in the past two decades. Unlike existing COPD drugs, it is not a steroid-based treatment and instead works by inhibiting two different enzymes, working to open up the airways and reduce inflammation.

Verona, a London-headquartered biotech founded in 2005, has also studied the same treatment in patients with a host of other lung conditions, including bronchiectasis, asthma and cystic fibrosis, as well as in combination with another COPD drug, potentially widening the reach of the drug in the years to come.

The acquisition of Verona would give Merck, best known as a cancer drugmaker, a stronger foothold in respiratory medicine after the US approval of Winrevair last year, a treatment for a potentially fatal disease affecting the lungs and heart, which it acquired in its $11.5bn buyout of Acceleron Pharma in 2021.

Since Merck’s chief executive Rob Davis arrived in April 2021, Merck has ranked as one of the most active pharmaceutical groups for acquisitions and licensing deals, as measured by number of deals done and dollars spent. But in recent months investors have clamoured for more deals to offset the looming sales decline from Keytruda’s patent cliff.

Meanwhile, the life sciences sector has been destabilised this year by the possibility of drug pricing reforms under President Donald Trump’s administration, the threat of tariffs and changes to regulatory and public health agencies under the leadership of top US health official Robert F Kennedy Jr, a known vaccine sceptic.

Merck’s problems have been compounded by a sales slowdown in China for its top-selling human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil. Trump’s tariff policy prompted Merck in May to cut its 2025 sales outlook.

Davis has previously said he is hunting for deals of $1bn-$15bn in value, or even higher if the right target emerges. Earlier this year, Merck struck an up to $2.2bn licensing deal with China-based Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals for the global rights to its heart disease drug.