Formula E buys IP rights of the W Series, no decision yet on their use

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Formula E, the championship for electric single-seater racing cars, has acquired the intellectual property rights of the now defunct W Series.

The centrally managed series, which used Formula Regional cars and was exclusively for female racers, ran for three seasons (2019, 2021 and 2022) before going bankrupt. Part of it The process involves selling all assets, which helps pay off debts.

In the W Series liquidator’s latest progress report on 16 July, it was announced that Formula E Operations Ltd – the company behind FE – had acquired the intellectual property rights to the W Series:

“The company owned intellectual property consisting of trademarks, pending trademark applications, social media accounts and domain names. After various parties expressed interest, an agreement was reached with Formula E Operations Limited and the intellectual property was transferred for a total of £110,000 plus VAT. This sale was completed on March 28, 2024 and steps are underway to assign worldwide transfers.”

FE CEO Jeff Dodds then spoke exclusively to Formula Scout about the reasons for the purchase.

“We have been very honest and open about our focus on bringing more diversity to motorsport and we think FE is a great place to do that,” he said.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean gender diversity, it doesn’t mean we’re trying to get more women drivers. Although I would love to do that. But we also had disabled driver Robert Wickens behind the wheel in Portland. So we just want to give different people the opportunity to try out cars and realise their potential in motorsport. And I thought the W Series was a really brave attempt to do that for women in racing.

“It didn’t work out for them. They got great footage, great intellectual property, great name recognition and great attention. So we wanted to acquire that in the hope that we could use it in some way in the future to promote women in motorsport. Now we may never use it. Maybe we’ll do something incredible with it, but to me it seemed like a good opportunity given the price of the asset.”

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 all sorts of things with it. We have Girls on Track as a massive promotion to get more young women into STEM and motorsport. So we could try and use the W Series branding for something like that. It doesn’t have to be on the race track, it could be on the track. So we haven’t even thought about what we could do with it. I just thought it would be a good opportunity to have the asset because we’re focused on getting more women into motorsport.”

Last month, FE founder Alejandro Agag also told Formula Scout that the creation of a junior series was not being considered “at the moment”.

“Because the costs are very high and it would be difficult to get a return on investment. That’s why we try to organize supporting series in the FE like the Jaguar (Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy), but commercially that doesn’t make sense either. And the FE is doing very well commercially. But we believe that the revenue from a supporting series would not cover the costs.”

The W Series still has debtors, with the two biggest being Californian company The Bunker LA 2 (which owes £15,782,938) and Caitlyn Jenner’s company ‘Jenner Racing’, which branded Jamie Chadwick’s car in her title-winning 2022 W Series season and owes £40,426.