Atlanta Braves Holdings, Inc. (BATRA) Q2 2020 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Liberty Media Corporation's 2020 Quarter 2 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, August 10. I would now like to turn the conference over to Courtnee Chun, Chief Portfolio Officer and Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that this call includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as to the date of this call, and Liberty Media expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in Liberty Media's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based. On today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted OIBDA and adjusted EBITDA. The required definitions and reconciliations for Liberty Media and SiriusXM Schedules 1 and 2 can be found at the end of the earnings press release issued today, which is available on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Liberty President and CEO, Greg Maffei.

Good morning, and thank you, Courtnee. Today speaking on the call, we will also have Formula One's Chairman and CEO, Chase Carey; and Liberty's Chief Accounting and Principal -- Chief Principal Officer -- Financial Officer, Brian Wendling. First, I hope you all -- healthy and safe and have been enjoying your summer given these challenging circumstances. Second, I'd like to again thank our management teams and employees that have done such an impressive job managing through this COVID-19 crisis. So first, looking at Liberty SiriusXM. We completed the previously announced rights offering that was fully subscribed, generated proceeds of $754 million, and we used that money to fully repay the intergroup loan that Liberty SiriusXM had to the Formula One Group. During that period, we paused our share repurchases as we were prohibited from being in market during the rights offering. We are certainly aware that the discounting remains, and we have ample liquidity at LSXM and expect to take full advantage of the discount opportunity. Our ownership at SiriusXM now stands as of July 28 at 72.9%. SIRI also paused its buybacks in Q2 due to market conditions in the depths of the COVID crisis, but recently expanded their authorization by $2 billion. We remain very focused on getting to 80% at SIRI. Looking at Sirius itself, like our other subscription businesses, Sirius has proved resilient during the crisis. Self-pay net adds -- subscriber adds were 264,000 and churn was down to 1.6%. During the quarter, we generated over $0.5 billion of free cash flow. We also announced the deal to acquire Stitcher creating a full-service platform for podcast creators, publishers and advertisers and also announced a smaller deal, Simplecast, with podcast management and analytic platform services. SiriusXM continues to provide innovative programming and launching new acts, including the DC BOYS, Bob Marley, Coldplay, Queen, you know how much I enjoy Freddie Mercury, and the Comedian Jim Gaffigan. With strength and visibility into the business, we offered new 2020 guidance at SiriusXM. Turning briefly to the Formula One Group, and we'll hand the call to Chase in a moment. We returned to racing at the beginning of July, and we now have completed 5 races. We're still targeting a 15- to 18-race season, and we continue to move the business forward. We have a new lower cost cap that'll go into effect in 2021. We have new broadcasting and sponsorship deals. The teams and all of our partners have been doing a tremendous job of returning to the track. Yesterday, we had an exciting race in Silverstone, where Red Bull and Max Verstappen had a great strategy that they executed on very well upon to win. So it's exciting racing. Turning to Live Nation. Their top priority in the recent months has been strengthening their financial position. They announced an amendment to their credit agreement, which suspends their leverage covenant until the end of 2021 and provides increased flexibility. They recently reported results last week, still bullish on the future of live events, even if the near-term ticket is [ turbulent rather ]. They've already sold 19 million tickets of the 4,000 concepts of festivals, which are scheduled for 2021. Management expects live events can return to scale in the summer of 2021. In a positive note, 86% of fans opted to keep their tickets for rescheduled shows, even if they're offered refunds. Two-thirds of their fans keeping tickets for canceled festivals so they can go to the next year's show. Virtual concerts are generating big demand with fans. Over 67 million fans viewed 18,000 virtual concerts globally in the second quarter. We had over 150 performances for our virtual Lollapalooza, and we launched socially distant shows in permitted locations, including New Zealand, France, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Finland and select cities across the U.S. Now turning to Braves. Glad to see the Braves return to field and they're off to a strong start with 11-6 record, including 7 and 2 at home, and they won all 3 series at Truist Park. In series play, they are 5 in 1, which is tied to the most such victories in the majors. It was very sad to see our #1 Mike Soroka end the season early with a torn Achilles and we do wish him a speedy recovery, but the Braves still have 4 former first-round picks and starting rotation with Max Fried, Sean Newcomb, Kyle Wright and Touki Toussaint. Early in the year, Markakis opted out in the season, but he's since returned, and he returned with a bang with a walk-off homer last week in his debut.

While we wait for Greg to return, I'll continue on and then hand it over to Chase. Good morning, everyone. At the end of June, we amended the term loan and revolving credit facility at Formula One. The net leverage covenant will not apply until our first testing day for the quarter ending March 31, 2022, providing the business additional flexibility to operate during this uncertain time. Braves Holdings is expected to be out of compliance with certain debt covenants at the end of the quarter. We continue to work with the lenders to obtain waivers and covenant modifications. These discussions are going well, and we are optimistic that we will have a favorable resolution by the end of the month. Liberty SiriusXM Group had attributed cash, restricted cash and liquid investment of $154 million, excluding $1.8 billion of cash and restricted cash held at SiriusXM. We have $870 million of undrawn margin loan capacity at the parent level. The value of the SiriusXM common stock and Live Nation stock held at Liberty SiriusXM as of Friday's close was $22 billion, which excludes the value of the Live Nation call spread, which is held at Formula One Group valued at $210 million at quarter end. We have $2.1 million in principal amount of debt against these holdings. Total Liberty SiriusXM Group attributed principal amount of debt is $12.6 billion, which includes $9.4 billion of debt at Liberty SiriusXM. Formula One Group had attributed cash and liquid investments of $1.4 billion, which excludes $324 million of cash at Formula One. Total Formula One Group attributed principal amount of debt was $3.6 billion, which includes the $2.9 billion of debt held directly by Formula One, leaving $733 million at the corporate level. And lastly to the Braves, we had attributed cash, liquid investments and restricted cash of $329 million and attributed debt of $718 million. With that, I will turn it over to Chase to talk more about Formula One.

Okay. Thank you, Brian. And I guess I'll keep going and wait for Greg to return at some point. We were thrilled to return to racing with the launch of our 2020 season in Austria, the first weekend in July. It was an exciting race that saw a lot of competition in the mid-field with an action-packed last few laps that earned Lando Norris' first podium finish. In the 5 races so far, we've seen Lewis Hamilton fighting for his seventh world championship. The continued strength and ingenuity of Red Bull, the struggles of Ferrari and emergence in McLaren in racing point as serious contenders. Our data through the first 4 races of the season have produced solid viewership growth across the race weekend, especially in key markets like China and when there's tremendous growth on our digital platforms, measured in video views, social media interactions and traffic across the website and app. The drama in the Paddock built this summer as a number of driver changes were announced for 2021. Ferrari decided not to renew 4-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel and instead signed Carlos Sainz. His open seat at McLaren went to Daniel Ricciardo, which will make for a strong and entertaining pairing with Lando Norris. Renault decided to fill their vacancy with former Champion Fernando Alonso and Valtteri Bottas resigned with Mercedes for 2021. This continued speculation around Sebastian Vettel, some more to come. Just prior to the start of the season, we launched our #WeRaceAsOne initiative to tackle the major issues that we, as a sport and a society, are facing. We used our restart to show that we stand united against racism and are doing more to address inequality and diversity in Formula One, while also taking a moment to thank people around the world for the fortitude they've shown against the global COVID-19 pandemic. We will be establishing a task force to listen and identify the right initiatives required to increase diversity and inclusion across Formula One, specifically focused on identifying employment and education opportunities and the required actions to effect change. We're in the process of creating a foundation that primarily finance internships and apprenticeships within Formula One for underrepresented groups. These efforts build on the ambitious sustainability, diversity and inclusion strategies set out in November 2019, which set goals of having a net 0 carbon footprint by 2030, and ensuring all of our events are sustainable by 2025. Getting back to racing has been no easy feat, and I'd like to thank the FIA, our employees, the teams and drivers, our promoter partners and local authorities. Together, we developed an extensive code of conduct and testing protocols that are being closely followed and have been working well. Our priority has always been to safely transport everyone and to enable those individuals to operate in a safe and secure manner. We've been publishing our testing results each week as we believe it's good to provide this transparency. At Silverstone, we saw firsthand how our safety procedures are robust and effective. Sadly Sergio Parisse tested positive for the virus, but our trace and test procedure handled the situation safely and with efficiency with no impact on the race weekend for the wider sport. It shows how far we've come since Australia and is a testament to the diligent way that we've returned to racing. We now -- we have now announced 13 races in the revised calendar and expect to get to between 15 and 18 races in 2020. The newly added 3 races bring exciting circuits that were not part of the original 2020 calendar. Portimao in Portugal will be a completely new circuit, while we welcome back Imola and Nurburgring that have hosted world championships in the past. Unfortunately, due to the fluid nature of the ongoing pandemic, it will not be possible for us to race in the Americas this season, but we will look forward to being back in 2021. We expect to release the final details of the 2020 calendar in the coming weeks. While we've been extremely focused on 2020 season, we continue to progress the business for the long term. We reached a long-term exclusive rights agreement with Sky Deutschland beginning in 2021. Sky Deutschland will provide fans in Germany with full coverage of every Grand Prix and include Germany's first 24/7 channel dedicated to Formula One. We also announced agreements in Austria with ServusTV and ORF and in Russia with Match TV. We're in the process of finalizing the last couple of TV deals for 2021. We've also continued to strengthen and expand our commercial partnerships. We believe our planned race calendar of 15 to 18 races will be able to satisfy the vast majority of our contracted sponsorship revenue in 2020. To name a few recent updates, LIQUI MOLY, the globally renowned vehicle care products experts upgraded to an official sponsor for the next 3 years. Adapting to the new reality, we partnered with Zoom to deliver the first-ever virtual Paddock Club experience. Beginning with the race in Hungary, guests are treated to a range of experiences, and we're working to expand this offering to our global partners and F1 teams. Furthering the fan outreach, we announced a new podcast series with Spotify. Paddock Pass is hosted by Will Buxton and in these exclusive episodes, he will speak to drivers, team principles and legends to the sport. On the video front and following on the strong results of the first 2 seasons of the Netflix show Drive to Survive, the film crews are already at work filming the third season. We're also partnered with YouTube to live stream the Eifel Grand Prix in Nurburgring, Germany. This is the first time fans from select European countries will be able to view the entire Grand Prix weekend for free on the Formula One YouTube channel. Before our return to the track, we took the opportunity to revisit the cost cap of $175 million announced last October. The new cost cap of $145 million will be introduced in 2021 and will further reduce to $140 million in 2022 and $135 million in 2023. This will advance the objective to improve the competition and action on the track and at the same time, make the sport a healthier and more attractive business for all. With our return to racing and the revised cost cap, we have moved to finalized discussions around the Concorde Agreement. We've had productive conversations with all constituents, and we look forward to completing this agreement in the near future in solidifying the sport for the longer term. We've also been focused on the corporate operations of Formula One. During the second quarter, we furloughed over 50% of our workforce, but we're pleased to bring back the majority of our employees with our return to racing. We also focused on our balance sheet and announced an amendment to our debt covenants, which provides flexibility until March 31, 2022. These actions, along with a diligent approach to our spending will enable us to weather this difficult time. Given all the challenges in 2020, we're proud of what we've been able to and -- accomplish and expect to accomplish. We've been in regular contact with the majority of our commercial partners to discuss the reduced race calendar and the expectation that many of our races will not have fans. Clearly, this is going to impact our revenue in multiple areas, but it's still dependent on how the remainder of the year unfolds. We appreciate the value of our long-term partners, and we expect to resolve any contractual issues in a fair and straightforward manner. We're confident in our plans for 2020 and look forward to 2021 when we think we can return to our prior expectations for Formula One. Now I'll turn the call back to Greg.

Thank you, Chase, and thank you, Brian. Given the ongoing pandemic, we have decided that Liberty's Investor Day this year will be virtual and will happen over 2 days because no one as much as we love Zoom, should have to be in a video call for that long. On Thursday, November 19, we will cover Liberty Media and Liberty TripAdvisor and on Friday, November 20, we will include Qurate, GCI Liberty and Liberty Broadband. We'll run from [ 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. ] Eastern on both days. More details will be provided on our website, but please mark your calendars. As always, we appreciate your continued interest in Liberty Media. And again, hope you all stay safe and healthy. And with that, operator, I'd like to open the floor for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Ben Swinburne from Morgan Stanley.

Chase, could you talk about -- I know you're obviously laser-focused on 2020, but I'd love to ask you a couple of questions about next season. On the sponsorship front, are you able to give us any sense for how you're thinking that it's coming together for next year? I don't know if you're willing to be this specific, but I'm trying to figure out if '21 could be higher than 2019. Or if the sort of global recession and pressure on corporate spending has maybe changed the direction of that revenue line. And then secondly, I'm wondering if you're thinking about a later start to the season next year, just because of, obviously, what's going on with the virus and sort of continued time lines around vaccination. Just curious if that's an option that you guys are exploring yet or if it's too early. And then I just had one for Greg. Greg, you again reemphasized the discount at Liberty SIRI, the buyback. Did you guys buy back any shares between June 16 and whenever you filed the 10-Q? I guess we'll see what the number looks like on the share count front because it doesn't look like you did? And I didn't know if that was because you were boxed out or some other reasons. Just trying to reconcile the comment with the buyback.

Okay. Let me answer the second part first because it sort of sets up the first part. Yes. I think -- we are planning a 2021 season that looks pretty much like what we would have expected it to look like the beginning of this year. And obviously, we qualify that with -- we don't have any better visibility than anybody else what this virus is going to look like as we go forward. I do think one has to realize. I think we're about 5 months into the virus and our season in March would be still 7 months away. So there's a long time and the conversations on vaccines and treatments and testing and the like will obviously continue to evolve. We also obviously race in 22 countries. So we deal with a much bigger mixed bag of issues throughout this. But we are planning on 2021 that looks like we would've expected, which probably will be a '22 race calendar, a calendar that probably starts and finishes about when our calendar has. We may make it so there's a little more space in the front end of it, and the calendar and the second half is a little busier. So we've got a little more flexibility built into it, but I think that's probably a tweak to it, not a real restructuring. Clearly, as this goes along, we'll know more, and there's always the possibility we make some adjustments as we go forward. But at this point, we're planning races that will have fans. We've been in touch with most of our events. Again, nobody has visibility to this. We'll obviously have a lot of sports ahead of us. What will the NBA, NHL do as they get to next season? What are the soccer leagues, football leagues in Europe do as their seasons get going? So I think we do have the benefit of a lot of things that will be in front of us as templates around the world. I think as it relates to the sponsorship side, I think things went pretty quiet, just in the early stages, I'd say the first month or 2 of the virus period. I think as people adjusted to working from home and engaging in a different way. I mean, obviously, virtually, and connecting and the like. We actually feel pretty good about the traction in the last few months. We're actually in a pretty good place in terms of renewals. So I think sponsorship is a place we clearly believe there's real room to grow. I think we were talking before the virus hit about the headway we were making. We had acknowledged, we probably weren't as far along into growth as we expected, but still felt as strong as ever about the growth opportunities for us. The interest is good. So we continue to expect growth in that. And we -- again, our foundation's in a pretty good place. The renewal we have, we're having -- we're in advanced discussions that are very positive, and the interest from new parties is strong. So as much as everything's fluid, we feel pretty good about continuing to get to where we think we should be in the sponsorship world and the opportunity we have in front of us.

Okay. And Ben, I'm happy to try and answer the other. We were blacked out for most of Q2 during the rights offering, and we had our normal course blackouts prior to our earnings. The -- most of this is disclosed or more details in the press release. So that -- I know we just dropped it on, but if you look in that, I think that's outlined.

Our next question will come from Bryan Kraft from Deutsche Bank.

I want to ask 2 questions. First, on Formula One. Working capital usage has been essentially neutral year-to-date. Do you expect that to change at all in the second half based on what you know at this point in time? And related to that, if the season were to be unexpectedly cut shorter than the 15- to 18-race plan, would you be in a position where you'd have to refund fees collected for this season already, for example, those from broadcast rights holders? Just trying to get a sense for what the potential cash need could be relative to the cash that you have on the balance sheet currently. And then my other question is on the strategic front. Greg, if you were to increase your equity stake in iHeart to something closer to the 50% level that has received antitrust approval, what are the reasons that you would be doing it through the Liberty Sirius versus SiriusXM and the pros and cons of those 2 options?

Chase, do you want to start on that?

Yes. Yes, sure. The -- yes, I think largely in terms of payments received from parties, not in all cases, but I'd say in the majority of our cases, we are aligning payments more with the races. So payments which would have been scheduled throughout the race season, that would have started in March -- obviously, the race season starting in July, it's a different start and a different pace to it. So not in all cases, but I think in the majority of it, we've moved those payments to be more aligned with the races. So I'm not saying there's no impact, but certainly, the impact if we didn't get to our targeted races from people who've paid us for that -- for those races would be limited just because of, again, how we're sort of looking for payments to commit more against the races as they're actually occurring. Yes. And I think in terms of working capital, and I'd say, I don't really probably get that granular on trying to -- because we've got so many moving parts, they probably use some working capital evolve, obviously, versus second quarter, we had much in the way of operations. So there -- it probably limits the amount of working capital that's -- we're generating. When we're not operating the business in the third and fourth quarter, we'll obviously be operating the business, which will create working capital. I mean, clearly, there's an impact on our revenue. So our working capital is not what it would be in a normal year just because, as the results aren't what they'd be in a normal year. But there will be -- but I don't actually -- with all those moving parts, if we've got a liquid enough balance sheet sort of not -- it's not probably one of the things I forecast or particularly, I think we manage our payments and receipts, but focus more on that than the working capital, which would be probably reasonably ordinary course for a reduced level of operations.

Yes. I'd like to just add on Chase's comment before I address iHeart. I mean, obviously, one of the reasons we did the reattribution was to put a bulletproof balance sheet in place at Formula One, and it sets up holdco. I think we've done that. So I echo Chase's points. We're very much focused on getting through 2020 and set ourselves in place that no matter what happened in 2020, we were prepared to try and get back to normal course, which we're reasonably confident for 2021. Turning briefly to iHeart. We -- there are some issues there that are worth thinking about for the long term, which is -- Sirius is a faster-growing entity than iHeart. How much do you want to consolidate that? How would you want to account for that? There are a lot of operating synergy potential there. But candidly, given the opportunities we have at SiriusXM, we like iHeart, but we don't feel any rush to do that. We've all noted the discount. We've all noted some of the things that SIRI wants to do about getting to 80. We've noted some of the things that SIRI wants to do about -- potentially in podcasts. Those haven't been big, and I don't expect they're going to be huge going forward. But the point being there are demands on the cash flow of SIRI and opportunities on the cash flow of SIRI that are interesting. And iHeart is a great management team. We like the business, but clearly, advertising is challenged in this environment, and we want to watch and see what happens.

If I could ask 1 follow-up on that, Greg. The antitrust approval, I've seen that applies to either scenario, whether it would be acquired through Sirius or iHeart up to the 50%. Is that correct?

I think you meant to Liberty Sirius or SIRI, so yes. I understand. We treat it as 1 entity for that purpose only.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from David Karnovsky from JPMorgan.

Just a few for Chase. On the race promotion in the past, I think you've discussed having a long list of locations that want to hold the Grand Prix. So just wondering if you think the pandemic will impact the willingness of local governments to subsidize and support races, either to the negative because of pressure to finances or maybe to the positive even because of the need to attract tourism in the future. And then just for this season, assuming a limited number of fans are allowed at some races, can you discuss how this would impact promotor fees? Would this be prorated based on how much of the venue you're able to fill?

Sure. So in terms of race promotion, certainly, in discussions to date, which are obviously, therefore, are beyond this year. They're not 2020. I mean we've had -- we've certainly had races inserted as one-offs. Some of them I mentioned in the early comments like Portugal and Imola. But on the longer-term, traditional-type arrangements, we've actually got our calendar pretty well set forth. We haven't announced 2021 just because of the focus on 2020, but we're pretty -- we're close to sort of finalizing 2021. We've got a couple of agreements to complete where we sort of have the business terms agreed. We've got to pay for it. There's been no impact on that -- and obviously, those are discussions that would have began well before the virus and has certainly not had any negative impact. And I think in some ways, it is -- the importance of getting back to the world as we know it and reenergizing, it actually seems to be -- it's always a bigger topic, the positive you're talking about as opposed to the negative. In the short term, everybody still wrestles with how long is the virus is going to last, but I think there is a broad-based assumption that the world has to continue to recover and businesses have to -- everything has to start to operate. And in some ways, there's a pent-up demand for this. And obviously, in importance, we have places that want to attract people and the like, the types of cities we're in that obviously are very -- where tourism and their general business is an important -- and exposure to the global -- to the world is important. Probably makes our platforms more important. But the conversation and interest, if not -- we've not seen any negative, given our calendar for 2021, the conversations we have right now are probably early stage because they're not for next year. We've got next year, as I said, pretty much done, and we're just finishing the agreements for it. So we're not pushing 2022 and beyond, but there are still parties that we've talked to, but again, have not, in any way -- their interest hasn't diminished. We're not into those sort of agreements. We're not really into business terms when we're talking a race that's 2 or 3 years away because it's early stage. So you're really talking more about the opportunity and what you can do with it and things around it. So it's not the detail and substance. The agreements we have this year, I mean, it is such a unique year. I mean they're all over the place. I mean you have obviously -- we don't -- we're not going to -- we don't expect [ fan ] at the first race. We think just potential for a very small number of fans. It's probably now [ Mugello ], but -- and probably increasing, not still on races in the latter part of the schedule. There's certainly -- we hope to have fans in as many as possible. In some places, the governments want to get a little closer to the date to determine what the situation is. Our deals, our agreements vary all over, in some degree, depend -- are for these long-term partners or one-off partners. So there are a lot of -- there are lot of moving parts, and some of them do have variables in it. But again, it differs in each place, which is always the case with our agreements.

We'll now take the next question from James Ratcliffe from Evercore.

One for Greg and 1 for Chase, if I could. Greg, following up on iHeart, there was a call from last November at the Analyst Day, John said something to the effect of, you couldn't really see value in buying things at the moment of [ evaluation ] levels unless there were synergies. And clearly, there will be a lot of synergies if you owned all of iHeart and you could combine it with SiriusXM. Can you talk about what sorts of synergies you could potentially capture owning a minority, noncontrolling stake in iHeart? And then for Chase, around some of the broadcast renewals, it sounds like you're pretty happy with what you've gotten in Germany, in Austria, I guess, Russia and I think Scandinavia, as well. As you work to finalize an agreement in Spain, it sounds like adding call sites to Ferrari and Fernando Alonso coming back should be positive for the acts. Can you provide any additional commentary on what you've been hearing from your broadcast partners over the last few months? And how are you viewing the market for sports rights, specifically across some of the most important European markets?

Sure. I'll go first, Chase. On iHeart, I think you point out that a minority stake would make some of the issues around synergies more difficult, but I don't necessarily think impossible in terms of how you share advertising sales, how you share digital build-outs. There are clearly ways we could work together. There are probably ways we can work together even without an acquisition, but they get easier to the degree you have common ownership and the easiest of all is if you're 100%. So I think your point is fair. We -- the one thing I'd note is, John talked about valuations. Obviously, valuations have come down, but the business is more challenged as well. We would weigh all that. And ultimately, the goal would be to get to full consolidation, whether that takes longer or -- and is not something we can do out of the blocks. But as I said, right now, we're pausing on all of that. Sorry. Go ahead, Chase.

Okay. I guess I'd say in terms of the broadcast landscape, and it probably to some degree because our deals are multiyear deals. And even now we're in their deals that start in 2021. So we're not in discussions about deals for 2020, and again, our multiyear deals. The virus has actually not had a -- I mean, I can't say it's a positive, but I don't -- but it's not really had a material impact on sort of the interest in the sport. I mean I think it's an event -- main event -- continue to sort of have a unique value. I think we continue to see that varies by country. I think in general, you'd probably say that the pay side of the world, given its subscription base is slightly different than an ad-supported service so, and obviously, the pay sports services had to navigate through not having sports, but I think that as they come back, it probably reinforces the importance of those events on the sports platforms. But I would actually say in the broadcast world, and again, probably just the nature of the long-term agreements, it hasn't been -- it hasn't had a significant impact on the discussions we would have been having pre-COVID. I think everybody has some anxieties about what the short-term looks like. But again, I think a degree of confidence, particularly with the -- all the increased discussions about being at home and what you do at home, obviously, watching things on a screen, it's become more important than ever.

Our next question comes from Brian Russo from Crdit Suisse.

This one's about SiriusXM. Greg, in one of your past Analyst Days, I think you made a case that the TV and film business has challenges because certain technology companies have entered the space and they're spending more on content because they either have alternative ways to monetize or they're not valued on near-term profits. It seems like a similar case could be made for like spoken word content in the audio space. And I'd love to get your view on why this may or may not be a good analogy and what the implications could be for Sirius' content costs?

I think it's an imperfect analogy. There are certainly elements that might be worth considering. You've seen the case where Spotify has gotten enormous benefit from the perceived moves they've made, or not the perceived moves, but the value of the perceived moves -- the perceived value rather the move they've made in podcast. I guess I'd note that there's a certain base level that is music that all players have. There's a certain amount of differentiated content. And if you look at the amount of differentiated content that Sirius already has, it pretty much exceeds most, whether it be in sports, from ESPN to things like Formula One or whether it be -- the fact that you can listen to the NFL and MLB, you can listen to business, CNBC. You've got comedy. I would say there's already a breadth of differentiated content in SiriusXM, which is one of the reasons we've been able to charge a premium and continue to have growth and very low churn and viable churn against those other services and position ourselves very well. Our view is, I think we -- as Jim Myers elegantly stated, and I totally agree is, podcasting is going to be an interesting part of the business. Ultimately, it will have some percentage of the listening. It will still be fairly low. It's going to be important, but it'll be a fairly low percentage. And we are in the early innings of that, which has gone to podcast. There are certainly some of the people that have been signed to exclusives that are -- have an audience, but there is so much content that's high-value content that hasn't yet come to -- come on to podcast that we believe will come on to podcast. And a lot of it will be based on helping those people get on to the podcast role, which is one of the reasons we went out and did Stitcher and did Simplecast. The -- so we think the value is there in podcast and I think the market may have overreacted in a positive fashion to the moves that others have made in podcasting, but we'll see. I don't think this is like the complete world of video, where you're going to have guys with other -- you don't have them playing in a big way. People with other outside monetization schemes have not entered en force because they can sell some other kind of service or product and monetized to podcasts. That's not what Spotify's trying to do and that's not where the world has been. So, so far, it's been a much less differentiated business, and we already have a lot of unique content. So we'll see.

We'll take our next question from John Tinker from Gabelli & Company.

Switching gears to baseball. The -- could you just discuss, given that I think some of the -- you had some rent deferrals, what the attendance has been like at the stores and the restaurants and the Battery Park? And secondly, given you are wonderfully on time and on schedule on the build out, which I assume means you'll be sitting in the large tower, watching the all-star game next year, you sold some, I think, the rental apartments. How do you sort of see the property as part of your portfolio?

I'll answer the second part, and I'll let Brian, if you could, Brian, speak to the first about where we are at the battery. The -- look, I think we try and make a decision about uses of the capital and how it gets valued. And depending on where we stand, we might or might not -- and what kind of valuation we would get, we might or might not try and liquidate some of the Battery portfolio. Given what's going on in real estate, both office potential and retail potential, I'm not sure that's as likely in the near term. So if we do get a fully leased-up office space, maybe that'll be different. And we're obviously not in a downtown urban corridor, which seems to be the most challenged or where people have questions about the future. We may actually be a beneficiary of some de-densification. We'll see. So I think we'll look and see what kind of lease-up we get, what kind of valuation we get and make a decision on what are the alternative uses of the capital. Brian, could you address where we are on some of the rents?

Yes. So with the Battery, as Georgia started to open up, the Battery started to open up. They started with take-out at a limited number of venues. They're almost fully open now. There's in-person dining at quite a few of the venues. They're following various safety protocols to make sure their patrons are safe and everything's clean. The Omni's booking up fairly well, especially those corner rooms that can see into the park, as you might expect, and the Aloft just opened recently. So everything is going pretty well at the Battery.

Our next question comes from Jason Bazinet from Citi.

I just had a question for Mr. Carey. In general, investors like you as a manager and they like the Formula One asset, and they like what you're doing with the asset. But you said since inception that you're very focused on the long term, making decisions on the long-term value creation, not short term. And the debate that's emerged is sort of when the summation of all the decisions that you've been made will sort of manifest themselves in something that's sort of obvious to the buy side in terms of a better EBITDA number, materially better. My question is, based on everything that you know and based on that sort of potential race schedule that you saw in 2021, do you think 2021 could be the year? Or as you sort of add up all of the puts and takes and decisions, does it feel more like a 2022 or 2023 sort of story?

Look, I mean, I -- I mean, in reality, if you go back in the beginning of this year, as we said, it may not go all the way back because I felt -- I feel we were actually -- well, you're never exactly where you planned, but we were on pretty much the track we had laid out 3 years ago when we talked about '17 and '18 being foundation building. I mean I know we tried to be clear that it was going to take a couple of years. I mean we've been clear what we stepped into and what we had to do and what we had to put in place. I know the market always think you build the foundation in 3 months. But '17 and '18, we were really building the long-term foundation. I think we had a real step forward. It's just the first step in '19, and we have been clear. We were expecting 2020 to be another significant step forward and 2021 to continue to be a further step forward. So we were very much, I think, on a trajectory to moving. And again, it wasn't going to be in 12 months, but moving to delivering the type of growth that got us to a place. And you're never done. So it's not like we're -- not like we're done in 2023 or something. I mean I think clearly, we've got initiatives like new cars in 2022 and other initiatives. We've talked about countries that, to grow this sport in, that are 5 to 10 year. I mean China and the U.S. are clearly not payoffs that happen in 2 or 3 years. But we were -- I think we felt at the beginning of this year, we were on a good track, and we've got a pretty predictable business model. So ex the virus, we were very much moving to deliver the type of growth, long-term growth that we had talked about. Obviously, the virus turned it all on its head. We, at this point, we're planning on a 2021 that is probably not quite, but pretty close to the 2021 we would have planned. Now planning anything in the virus era is -- you obviously got complexities because we don't know what are going to be the issue in terms of limitations of fan attendance and things. We do believe the world, again, has to start to function in the ways we know the world. And so we do believe 2021 can be pretty close to back to the -- that should -- on the curve or on the slope we had planned for the business. But again, none of us have the visibility we'd like to the virus. So I guess, excluding unexpected continuing encumbrances from the pandemic, we expect in 2021 and 2022 to be largely back on the curve we would've been on from sitting at the beginning of this year with '19 being a year of growth and '20 being a significant further year of growth.

We'll now take our next question from Zack Silver from B. Riley.

Okay. Great. Two on Formula One. The first is, if you could talk about how F1 TV Pro fits into some of the more recent broadcast renewals, and also whether you see that as an opportunity for some of the pay TV partners to be more of a meaningful distribution partner for that D2C service. And the second is just on the flyaway races that began a little later on. They're obviously more demanding from a logistics perspective. If there are any snags, would you be able to pivot back to some of the circuits closer to home? Is there anything contractually that precludes you from doing that?

Okay. First, in the latter, no, there's not. So if we -- which is, again, we haven't announced the last handful of races. And we're creating options on all fronts. I mean there's probably some limitation on how late if something gets -- if something came up and we got canceled a week before the race that may be more problematic to pivot on that. But if we got -- if we've got adequate time, then we are certainly building in contingencies in all directions. So in the latter. In terms of F1 TV Pro, and again, it varies by market. Actually, I'd say right now, I mean, because to me, the most important thing for F1 TV Pro, (I mean beyond getting it, quality-wise and we did have a glitch the very first race, but it's worked well since then, and I think we feel we're continuing to get there with the product) is to grow its access to consumers. So in a number of places, we are pursuing it more as a partnership and trying to develop ways to have it be something to enhance the experience for a traditional television partner's customer with a product that is geared towards a true enthusiast. And so it's that extra experience and work with our partners to have that be something that we can both share in the success of and then benefit from. So certainly, we've had more discussions on that front. There are places. It operates more in countries. We certainly continue to operate it more as a stand-alone alternative for the traditional television. But in many ways, in the short term, I think the path that I think probably that's the best short and long-term opportunities for us is if we can develop it in the right way and the right structure with our partners as an extra dimension. And then it gives us the optionality as we go forward long term to how does it fix. Does it fit into a world that obviously is continuing to evolve? Certainly, the digital side of our world, in many ways, in a positive way continues to explode the viewership and the engagement. We've got the products we're putting out there. There seems to be no end to the appetite for it and we just are looking to continue to find ways to enhance and expand that. So that whole -- all those opportunities in that field, I think are becoming an increasingly important part of the sport. And it's obvious for -- in all aspects of the content world. But it really is becoming, in many ways, have you when you talk about reach, it really is becoming reach and engagement with fans.

Our last question today comes from Kannan Venkateshwar from Barclays.

So Greg, 1 quick one on Sirius for you. With the Stitcher acquisition, I mean, historically, Sirius has been anchored more to the used car market. And the conversion rates have been linked to that. But with the Stitcher acquisition, you now have a brand potentially that can allow Sirius to decouple to some extent from the auto market. Does this really open up opportunities outside the U.S. to a greater extent than has been possible? And is Stitcher potentially an independent brand that can be used in that respect?

Thank you for the question. I think we have been expanding in ways outside the car, obviously, for a while. Look at the Pandora acquisition. But your point about being outside the car and outside the U.S. is certainly true with the acquisitions we've made. How much of our content will go outside the U.S.? How much does it play? That's an open question. In general, the U.S. market, given the ARPUs, is a more attractive market to operate in, so we're cautious about proceeding. We see the benefits of scale outside the U.S. But in general, those markets are in the less attractive markets than the market we're in, partly because of the ARPU, as I mentioned, and partly because some of the protections are on the DMCA. So I think we'll approach that cautiously. One of the things I would note is our -- certainly our OEM auto partners, the perversity, would love to see us be more global because they would love to see us bundled across all markets when they build cars. They are global players. So we will tiptoe outside the United States. We do have some, obviously, in Canada and Mexico already. Historically, Pandora was in some of those markets, English-speaking markets outside the U.S., but we will be cautious in doing that, I would say. I think that's our last question for the morning. Thank you very much all for joining. Thank you for your continued interest in Liberty, and we look forward to speaking with you again and getting a chance to have you participate in the Investor Day, if so, remotely. Thank you very much.

Thank you all, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.