All3Media owner RedBird IMI among suitors for Coulthard-owned TV firm
Sky News has learnt that RedBird IMI has tabled an offer for Whisper Group, which has been exploring a sale for several months.
Sources said the auction process was at a critical stage with a buyer potentially being selected within days.
Money latest:
RedBird IMI, which had hoped to take full control of The Daily Telegraph before a change of media ownership law meant that its Abu Dhabi state involvement had to be curtailed, already owns All3Media, the TV production giant behind a string of hit shows.
However, its interest in Whisper is said to have been expressed through RedBird IMI rather than being conducted using All3Media as the acquirer.
RedBird is now in the advanced stages of taking control of the Telegraph newspaper titles, with IMI restricted to owning a maximum 15% stake.
The identities of the other bidders for Whisper were unclear on Thursday evening.
Whisper Group was established in 2010 and won a BAFTA for its coverage of the Women's Euros in 2022.
It is working with advisers at KPMG on a deal.
Whisper is already 30%-owned by Sony Pictures Television, which acquired the stake in 2020.
Sony replaced Channel 4's Indie Growth Fund as an investor in the business.
A majority of the shares in Whisper are owned by its founders and management team.
The company is best-known for its sports productions, and is responsible for Channel 4's Formula One coverage as well as international cricket, boxing and the Paralympics.
Whisper employs about 300 people, and has operations in London, Cardiff, Manchester and Riyadh.
Its chief executive, Sunil Patel, co-founded the producer alongside Mr Coulthard and Mr Humphrey.
It is said to be plotting further expansion in sport in the form of bigger events and rightsholders, as well as in events, where its clients include Red Bull.
Whisper is also focused on growing its presence in the US, where it currently works with Tom Brady's Religion of Sport, and the Middle East, where it is partnered with Neom and Saudi Pro League teams.
Outside of sports rights, it has produced documentaries about Ben Stokes, the England Test cricket captain, and Sven-Goran Ericsson, the late England football manager.
It has also diversified into entertainment programming, producing the Wheel of Fortune gameshow hosted by Graham Norton.
Its most recent accounts disclosed a £4.3m pre-tax profit for the year to March 31, 2024.
Both RedBird IMI and Whisper declined to comment.
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Vettel cannot imagine a return to Formula One
Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel cannot imagine a return to Formula One. "Formula One is over. At some point, it's time to let others take the field," he told the Auto, Motor und Sport magazine. Advertisement "I think it's good that a whole generation has been replaced. This is not a vote against the old, but one in favour of the young," he said. "I didn't use to care back then which of the established drivers was no longer driving. The main thing was that I was allowed to drive." Vettel, 38, retired from F1 at the end of 2022 saying he wanted to spend more time with his wife Hanna and their three children. He has flirted with a possible return from time to time, but has never become serious about it. Since ending his F1 career, Vettel has dedicated much of his time to his environmental and sustainability projects. He is also co-owner of the Germany SailGP sailing team. Advertisement Vettel won four consecutive F1 titles with Red Bull between 2010 and 2013. Last month, the German revealed that he was in early talks with his former team and current Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko about the idea of succeeding the 82-year-old Austrian when his contract with the team ends in 2026. "What form that might take will have to be seen," Vettel told broadcaster ORF at the time. Marko has been involved with Red Bull since the team's beginnings in 2005 and has already said that Vettel would be his ideal successor.
New York Times
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Lando Norris has finally matched Oscar Piastri for one thing all F1 champions need
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He helped form the Formula One Constructors' Association (FOCA) in 1974 and became its president four years later. Unimpressed with what he saw as a disjointed sport with clumsy negotiating processes, Ecclestone wielded the united interests of F1's teams as a tool to reinvent things and simultaneously climb the ranks. He took on FISA, then the motorsport subsidiary of the overarching FIA, in a battle that had Ecclestone and FOCA take over F1's broadcast rights within the sport's first binding Concorde Agreement. Under Ecclestone, F1 professionalized rapidly. Today, it's known as the pinnacle of motorsport and a global spectacle. Ecclestone knew that television was the key to making F1 mainstream — and bringing in money — and began agreeing annual deals with broadcasters, rather than negotiating on a race-by-race basis. 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He had qualified as a barrister in 1964, but ventured into motorsport later in the decade. 'I thought to myself, 'I've found a world where they don't know about Oswald Mosley',' he later remarked. Mosley raced cars in Formula Two — his first race was the 1968 Deutschland Trophäe, which took Jim Clark's life in a crash — and later formed the March Engineering F1 team before stepping into motorsport politics. After a brief stint working for the United Kingdom's Conservative Party, Mosley began leaving his mark on F1 in the 1980s while forging a menacing partnership with Ecclestone at FOCA as March's representative. Alongside Ecclestone, he was another driving force behind the first Concorde Agreement in 1981. He unseated incumbent Jean-Marie Balestre as president of FISA in 1991, before taking the FIA presidency in 1993. This gave him the additional remit of road car safety. Advertisement Mosley was unafraid of making bold decisions or navigating complex negotiations in the top job. He steered F1 through public outcry after the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger in 1994 and made sweeping safety reforms, mandating the use of the head and neck support system (HANS device) and helping establish and promote crash testing. He facilitated the deal that led to Ecclestone acquiring F1's commercial rights in 1995, despite fierce opposition from the teams. Mosley also waged what were seen as personal wars against figures such as former McLaren boss Ron Dennis, dropping an unprecedented $100 million fine on Dennis' team in 2007 after the 'spygate' scandal. Mosley was an expert in weathering the storm and initially proved as unflappable as ever when he was rocked by a sex scandal in 2008, even surviving a confidence vote. But he eventually stepped down as FIA president in 2009 after four terms and 16 years that had established him as the ruthless, pragmatic face of motorsport governance. Schumacher is truly synonymous with F1. He was voted the sport's most influential person ever in a vote on F1's official website in 2020. A serial record-setter and seven-time drivers' world champion, Schumacher's influence as a sporting role model goes without saying. He has been an idol to many F1 drivers past and present. What he did for the on-track spectacle, though, might be the most interesting part of his legacy. Schumacher didn't invent aggressive racing, but he helped make it the norm in the 1990s and then early 2000s – personifying the 'elbows-out' style and ripping up unofficial 'gentlemen's agreements' between drivers. This infuriated rivals, including former champion Jacques Villeneuve, who believed the German ventured into disrespectful territory during their 1997 title battle. Martin Brundle said in 2003 that his former teammate's 'ruthless' driving sometimes 'went too far.' 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'Michael knew fitness was equal to lap time and he broke new ground,' Symonds said, in a testament to F1's ultimate competitor. F1 is no stranger to its drivers attaining celebrity status, but Hamilton is a true household name. He is one of the few individuals to transcend the sport and cross into the mainstream, and just so happens to be statistically the most successful F1 driver ever (with more wins than Schumacher, while each has the same number of drivers' titles). He might be most associated with the Mercedes-dominated turbo-hybrid era of the 2010s, but Hamilton made his F1 debut in 2007 with McLaren, when he redefined expectations of rookie drivers by finishing second in that year's championship, missing out on the title by just one point to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. He won his first title the following season and has been an F1 frontrunner ever since. The seven world championships, 105 wins, 202 podiums and 104 poles — all F1 records, with the first shared with Schumacher — speak for themselves, but Hamilton the activist is just as impactful as the driver. He has displayed the words Black Lives Matter on his helmet. Worn a shirt on the podium with the words 'Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor'. Spoken passionately about LGBTQ+ rights and worn a rainbow helmet in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These moments show how his influence also continues to shine in the 2020s. Advertisement And he has done it all while being the only Black competitor in F1 history. 'Don't ever compare me to anybody else,' he told Time Magazine before the 2025 season. 'I'm the first and only Black driver that's ever been in this sport. I'm built different. I've been through a lot. I've had my own journey. You can't compare me to another 40-year-old, past or present, Formula One driver in history. Because they are nothing like me.' Having formerly worked in news media with FOX and News Corp, Carey became F1 chief executive officer following Liberty Media's acquisition of the series and the FOM organization, ending the Ecclestone era in early 2017. F1 was entering a new period of uncertainty, but Carey oversaw its development into the spectacle it is today. The relaxation of social media restrictions in the paddock in 2017 and the 2019 introduction of the Netflix series Drive to Survive were part of a major marketing rebrand that focused on showcasing the sport's individuals and personalities just as much as the racing itself. This morphed F1 into a cultural phenomenon. At the end of Carey's first year in the role, F1 had 11.9 million followers across its social platforms, according to its website and Liberty's annual reports. In 2021, when Stefano Domenicali replaced Carey at the helm, that figure had nearly trebled, to 35m followers. At the end of 2024, the number stood at 97m. Carey also led a drive for parity, working with Jean Todt, Mosley's successor as FIA president, to introduce F1's first cost cap and even out payments to its teams in the 2021 Concorde Agreement. He also introduced the sport's first sustainability strategy in 2019 and worked to revamp the 2020 calendar as the Covid-19 pandemic launched global sport into chaos. Perhaps the biggest indicator of his legacy can be found in the 2025 calendar, which contains three races in the United States (Miami, Austin and Las Vegas) when, for years, only the Texan race had been on the schedule. Carey made it a priority to tap into the vast and previously unfulfilled potential of the American market, with F1 now chasing a new U.S. TV rights deal and attracting interest from Apple TV, and Indiana-based Cadillac entering the series to represent automotive giant General Motors in 2026. His association with F1 goes back over four decades but Newey becomes an exception to the rule here — after all, has anyone impacted the sport in the 2020s more than him? And if we're breaking rules, Max Verstappen is a particularly strong honorable mention, having ended one era of dominance by establishing his own. But it would be fair to argue that it was Newey's influence that positioned the Dutchman for that success. Advertisement Described by former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner as 'the only bloke who can see air,' Newey has been cemented as F1's most successful technical figure in the first half of the 2020s. But he was already a long way down that path after designing some of the most famous title-winning cars of the 1990s for Williams and McLaren. As Red Bull's chief technical officer, Newey has twice led the design of four straight title-winning cars. First came the RB6, which in Sebastian Vettel's hands scored Red Bull's first title in 2010, and the German wrapped up three more by 2013's end. Then there was the RB16B, which took Verstappen to his first drivers' championship and ended the Hamilton/Mercedes' reign of dominance in the memorable 2021 season. In 2022, new regulations had F1 enter its second ground-effect era, after the technology was prohibited in the 1980s. Newey is considered an expert in the field and even focused his university thesis on ground-effect aerodynamics. While many of the other teams struggled to adapt and were heavily affected by 'porpoising' — the car bouncing on its suspension as it is pulled to the ground by the airflow under the floor — Red Bull and Newey hit a home run with the RB18. It delivered Verstappen his second title and the team's first constructors' championship since 2013 and the end of its first era of dominance. The subsequent RB19 broke records as statistically the most dominant F1 car ever, winning 21 out of 22 races in 2023. Although he had long since transitioned to heading Red Bull's technical team, and even spending plenty of time on projects outside F1, Newey was directly involved in producing the car's front and rear suspension parts. The next year, Red Bull was finally reeled in and was toppled in the constructors' championship by McLaren. But nothing could stop Verstappen maximising his potential to win title number four in 2024. Advertisement Newey left Red Bull last year in the aftermath of Horner's behavior scandal, bringing an end to a 19-year tenure with Red Bull. He now serves as managing technical partner at Aston Martin, with a legacy that depicts him as a pioneer and a crucial part of what it takes to succeed in F1. The 75 Years of Speed series is part of a partnership with Shell. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication. (Top photos: Benjamin Cremel/AFP, Bernard Cahier, Mark Thompson,; graphic: Demetrius Robinson/The Athletic)
