The Ferrari F1 car
If you thought that F1 racing is all about having big money that is spent haphazardly in the pursuit of speed – then you would be right!
The professional sporting world is filled with teams that continuously spend, spend, spend but it seems that the spending habits of Formula One teams pale in comparison to the net worth of American baseball and football teams.
Schumacher in the 2001 Ferrari
Forbes recently released the net value of the Ferrari Formula One racing team and figures show it is worth a staggering $1.1 billion. But even though it is worth billions, Ferrari has still only managed to take 15th place in the list of the richest sports teams where it placed between the Philadelphia Eagles at $1.16 billion and the Chicago Bears at $1.09 billion.
The McLaren F1 team feature in 40th place
The next richest team on the Forbes list is found way down the listing in 40th place where McLaren can be seen with a net worth of $800 million. The Atlanta Falcons with $814 million and the Minnesota Vikings with $796 million are slotted in around Ferrari’s Formula One rival team.
No other Formula One teams managed to make the list, which was a surprise to many racing fans who associate the sport with copious amounts of money.
UK sports teams rank highly in terms of how much they are worth with Manchester United at $2.23 billion and Real Madrid with their $1.88 billion price tags. American sports teams that ranked high up in the list include Baseball’s New York Yankees at $1.85 billion and football’s Dallas Cowboys also worth $1.85 billion.
Alonso and Massa are miles apart in terms of wages
Ferrari pays its drivers high amounts of money but in comparison to what the team is worth, it is surprising that they aren’t earning more. Fernando Alonso earns around $36.8 million per year and Felipe Massa’s wages are a relative bargain at $12.3 million!
While Ferrari and McLaren are worth an awful lot of money, it is interesting to see that they are so far ahead of all of the other teams competing in the sport. In fact, it is also interesting that for two teams that compete so closely on the track, they are miles apart in terms of the money that they have available to spend.
Massa at work in his expensive Ferrari
Both Ferrari and McLaren are worth staggering amounts of money but in the sporting world, baseball and American football teams are worth far more and their star players earn way more than an F1 driver. Yet to us mere mortals, anything worth $1.1 billion is worth a lot of money!
Are you surprised that the Ferrari F1 team ranked in 15th place?
