Ryan Reynolds and Redbird Capital to invest in Alpine F1 team
Renault-backed racing outfit draws in €200mn stake from group of 5 investors as part of Luca de Meo plans
Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and AC Milan owners Redbird Capital Partners are among investors taking a stake in the Alpine Formula One racing team, valuing the Renault-backed group at $900mn as it seeks more championship breakthroughs.
Deadpool star Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, one of the co-writers behind the sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, have already notched up sports investments with the purchase of Wrexham FC, a small Welsh football club they propelled into the limelight with a reality TV show.
McElhenney, actor Michael B Jordan and Reynolds’ Maximum Effort Investments group will invest €200mn in the Alpine team alongside US-based Otro Capital and Redbird, Alpine said on Monday. They will jointly have a 24 per cent equity stake, it added.
The investment comes two years after Renault rebranded its team as Alpine and also outlined plans to reboot its sportscar brand of the same name.
That marked not only an attempt to get the F1 operation back to the front of the grid but also an effort by the wider French carmaker to put behind it years of scandals and setbacks.
Under chief executive Luca de Meo, who took over in mid-2020, the Renault group has returned to profit after a turbulent period marked by the arrest of former boss Carlos Ghosn.
Renault is now seeking to improve profitability at some of its brands, while De Meo has also sought to give the racing team more prominence and is trying to push it back on to the podium, after many lacklustre years. In 2022 Alpine finished fourth in the constructors’ world championship behind Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Owned by US group Liberty Media since 2017, F1 is set to add a grand prix in Las Vegas in November to the calendar, following the addition of a race in Miami last year.
The popularity of Drive to Survive, a behind-the-scenes series on Netflix, has powered the sport’s latest attempt to expand in the US from its origins in Europe.
The Huntsman family and Main Street Advisors, the financial advisers to basketball player LeBron James, participated in Otro and Redbird’s investments, Alpine said, highlighting the growing appeal of the sport in North America and the potential to boost Alpine’s profile.
F1 teams were historically known as money pits but Liberty Media put limits on expenditure in place to increase competition and make them more financially sustainable.
The investments will help Alpine’s “media and marketing strategy, essential to support our sporting performance over the long term”, chief executive Laurent Rossi said in a statement, adding that the team would also avail itself of the sports industry expertise of Redbird.
Reynolds has begun to forge a reputation as a savvy investor in recent years, maximising the appeal of brands and sporting teams, including through social media campaigns. In 2020 he sold his Aviation American Gin brand to Diageo for $610mn.
Wrexham FC, meanwhile, is fresh from winning promotion to League Two, the fourth tier of English football.
The Welcome to Wrexham show as well as Reynolds’ regular appearances in the stands have helped it build buzz.
Alongside the F1 announcements on Monday, Renault outlined new goals for its Alpine sportscar brand, which is set to have an line-up of electric models from 2024. The brand, relaunched in 2017 with the A110 sports coupé, aims to reach €2bn in revenue in 2026 and break even by then, before hitting €8bn in revenue and an operating margin of above 10 per cent in 2030.
It does not currently break out its revenues, though by numbers of units sold these reached 3,546 in 2022, up 33 per cent from a year earlier. Alpine plans to launch seven new models by 2030, it said. It added that it had nearly doubled its sales points in two years to around 140, and was planning a push into the US as well as China.