Ryan Reynolds Buys Stake in F1 Racing Team, Growing His Business Empire

Actor and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds is expanding his business empire into Formula One racing.

Reynolds and a group that includes celebrity American investors, such as his business partner and fellow actor Rob McElhenney, are buying a 24% stake in the Alpine F1 team for about $218 million, the team’s owner said Monday.

F1 races have become more popular in the U.S. in recent years, with celebrities packing into stands to watch drivers speed around a track. Alpine, a mid-tier team based in the U.K., is one of 10 F1 competitors.

The investors are buying a stake in Alpine Racing Ltd, the parent company of the Alpine team, according to Renault Group, a French auto manufacturer and the team’s owner. Renault said the new investors would bring expertise in marketing, merchandising and other areas.

The deal values the racing team at around $900 million, Renault said.

Reynolds, 46 years old, has long been a Hollywood star, with leading roles in comedy, action and rom-com films. He has used his marketing savvy to build an off-screen empire, purchasing stakes in the gin brand Aviation, the cell phone company Mint Mobile and a Welsh soccer team. T-Mobile US agreed to buy Mint Mobile earlier this year for about $1.35 billion and Diageo agreed in 2020 to pay as much as $610 million to acquire Aviation.

Reynolds started the production company and marketing agency Maximum Effort, named after his character’s catchphrase in the “Deadpool” movie franchise.

Alpine’s new investors include the actor Michael B. Jordan and private investment firms Otro Capital and RedBird Capital Partners. The firms have been affiliated with sports teams including the Dallas Cowboys and the French soccer club Toulouse FC.

Maximum Effort and representatives for Reynolds didn’t immediately return a request for comment. Representatives for Jordan declined to comment.

Reynolds and McElhenney are involved with another sports team, Wrexham AFC, a low-tier soccer club in North Wales that they bought in 2020. They chronicled their takeover of the struggling team and efforts to transform it in a 2022 FX docuseries, “Welcome to Wrexham.” The club this spring won a promotion out of the lowest tier of English soccer to the second-worst league.

Wrexham owners, Ryan Reynolds (L) and Rob McElhenney (R) (Photo by Jon Hobley/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Alpine F1 team is featured in the Netflix series, “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” which has drawn American fans to the sport since the show premiered in 2019.

F1 teams compete in many races each season. Several drivers represent each team and race in solo, aerodynamic cars.

The Alpine team has existed under different names for more than four decades. Renault renamed the team Alpine in 2021 after the company’s sports car brand, Société des Automobiles Alpine SAS. The team placed fifth and fourth out of 10 teams in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

Laurent Rossi, the chief executive of the Alpine team and the sports car brand, said in a statement Monday that the team wanted to catch up with top squads and invest in state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.

“This association is an important step to enhance our performance at all levels,” Rossi said.

Alpine said Monday that it aimed for its sports car brand to break even in 2026 and to generate more than $8.7 billion in revenue in 2030.

The team is based in the English village of Enstone, about 60 miles northwest of London.

Australia is in the midst of a ‘baby recession’ with preliminary estimates showing the number of births in 2023 fell by more than four percent to the lowest level since 2006, according to KPMG. The consultancy firm says this reflects the impact of cost-of-living pressures on the feasibility of younger Australians starting a family.

KPMG estimates that 289,100 babies were born in 2023. This compares to 300,684 babies in 2022 and 309,996 in 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said weak economic growth often leads to a reduced number of births. In 2023, ABS data shows gross domestic product (GDP) fell to 1.5 percent. Despite the population growing by 2.5 percent in 2023, GDP on a per capita basis went into negative territory, down one percent over the 12 months.

“Birth rates provide insight into long-term population growth as well as the current confidence of Australian families,” said Mr Rawnsley. “We haven’t seen such a sharp drop in births in Australia since the period of economic stagflation in the 1970s, which coincided with the initial widespread adoption of the contraceptive pill.”

Mr Rawnsley said many Australian couples delayed starting a family while the pandemic played out in 2020. The number of births fell from 305,832 in 2019 to 294,369 in 2020. Then in 2021, strong employment and vast amounts of stimulus money, along with high household savings due to lockdowns, gave couples better financial means to have a baby. This led to a rebound in births.

However, the re-opening of the global economy in 2022 led to soaring inflation. By the start of 2023, the Australian consumer price index (CPI) had risen to its highest level since 1990 at 7.8 percent per annum. By that stage, the Reserve Bank had already commenced an aggressive rate-hiking strategy to fight inflation and had raised the cash rate every month between May and December 2022.

Five more rate hikes during 2023 put further pressure on couples with mortgages and put the brakes on family formation. “This combination of the pandemic and rapid economic changes explains the spike and subsequent sharp decline in birth rates we have observed over the past four years,” Mr Rawnsley said.

The impact of high costs of living on couples’ decision to have a baby is highlighted in births data for the capital cities. KPMG estimates there were 60,860 births in Sydney in 2023, down 8.6 percent from 2019. There were 56,270 births in Melbourne, down 7.3 percent. In Perth, there were 25,020 births, down 6 percent, while in Brisbane there were 30,250 births, down 4.3 percent. Canberra was the only capital city where there was no fall in the number of births in 2023 compared to 2019.

“CPI growth in Canberra has been slightly subdued compared to that in other major cities, and the economic outlook has remained strong,” Mr Rawnsley said. “This means families have not been hurting as much as those in other capital cities, and in turn, we’ve seen a stabilisation of births in the ACT.”

Ryan Reynolds Buys Stake in F1 Racing Team, Growing His Business Empire

He joined investors like actor Michael B. Jordan in buying a 24% stake in the Alpine F1 team

Continued stagflation and cost of living pressures are causing couples to think twice about starting a family, new data has revealed, with long term impacts expected