Concorde Agreement

The Concorde Agreement is a contract between the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the Formula One teams and the Formula One Group which dictates the terms by which the teams compete in races, and how the television revenues and prize money is shared. There have been eight versions of the Concorde Agreement, all of which terms were kept strictly secret: the first one was signed in 1981, with newer agreements being signed in 1987, 1992, 1997, 1998, 2009, 2013; the current agreement was signed in 2021. The secrecy was broken by racing journalist Forrest Bond, when the 120-page 1997 Concorde Agreement was published at the end of 2005 by RaceFax.^[1]

The intent of the agreements is to encourage professionalism and to increase the commercial success of Formula One. Conditions of the agreement generally include the obligation of the teams to participate in every race, hence making the sport more reliable for broadcasters, who were expected to invest heavily to acquire television broadcast rights, and a percentage of the sport's commercial revenue in return for the teams.