Photo: Formula E
Formula E, the electric single-seater racing championship, has purchased the intellectual property rights of the now defunct W Series.
The centrally-run series, which used Formula Regional cars and was exclusively for female racers, ran for three seasons (in 2019, ’21 & ’22) before entering administration. Part of that process includes selling all of its assets, which helps cover off debts.
In W Series’ latest administrator’s progress report, published on July 16, it was revealed that Formula E Operations Ltd – the company behind FE – had purchased W Series’ IP rights:
“The Company owned IPR comprising trademarks, pending trademark applications, social media accounts and domain names. Having received interest from various parties, an agreement was reached with Formula E Operations Limited and the IPR was assigned for a total of £110,000 plus VAT. This sale completed on 28 March 2024 and steps are ongoing to concluded [sic] worldwide assignments.”
FE’s CEO Jeff Dodds exclusively spoke to Formula Scout afterwards about what had instigated the purchase.
“What we’ve been really honest and open about is we are very focused on bringing more diversity to motorsport. We think FE is a great place to do that,” he said.
“So that doesn’t necessarily mean gender diversity, doesn’t mean we’re trying to get more women than drive. Although I’d love to do that. But also, we had disabled driver Robert Wickens [driving] in Portland. So we just want to give opportunities for different people to try cars and to to realise their potential in motorsports. And W Series I thought was a a really valiant effort to do that for women racing.
“It didn’t work out for them. They got some great footage, some great IP, some great name recognition, some great awareness. So we wanted to acquire that on the off-chance that we could use that in the future, in some way, shape or form, in order to promote women in motorsports. Now we may never use it. We might do something incredible with it, but for me, for the price of the asset, it felt like a good opportunity.”
Dodds said FE would “not necessarily” use the IP rights for an on-track product such as a feeder series to FE.
“We could do any sort of thing with it. So we have Girls on Track as a massive promotion, trying to get more young women into STEM subjects, in motorsport. So we could try and use the W Series branding around something like that. It doesn’t have to be on track, it might be on track. So we haven’t even thought about what we might do with it. I just thought it was a good opportunity to have the asset because we are focused on bringing more women into motorsport.”
Last month, FE founder Alejandro Agag also told Formula Scout that “for the moment” creating a feeder series is not under consideration.
“Because the cost is very high, and the return would be difficult to get. So we try to have support series in FE like the Jaguar [Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy], but also commercially it didn’t make sense. And FE, commercially, is working very well. But we think a feeder series, the revenue would not finance the cost.”
W Series still has debtors, with the two largest being Californian firm The Bunker LA 2 (which owes £15,782,938) and Caitlyn Jenner’s ‘Jenner Racing’ firm which branded Jamie Chadwick’s car in her title-winning 2022 W Series season and owes £40,426.