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.
In 1979, the Commission Sportive Internationale, a subordinate organization of the FIA, which was at that time the rule-making body for Formula One, was dissolved.
FOCA's chief executive at the time was Bernie Ecclestone and his legal advisor was Max Mosley, while the president of FISA was Jean Marie Balestre.
The two organizations' disagreements, which came to be known as the FISA–FOCA war, resulted in several races being cancelled, or declared non-valid (e.g. the 1980 Spanish Grand Prix).
Goodyear threatened to withdraw entirely from Formula One, an event which would have been commercially disastrous for the sport, so Ecclestone organized a meeting with all team managers, Balestre, and other FISA representatives at the FIA headquarters in Place de la Concorde, Paris, France.
Ecclestone required the approval of Jean-Marie Balestre and the FIA to transfer Formula One television rights to FOCA.
He arranged that his business partner Paddy McNally, who was proficient in French, should negotiate the agreement with Balestre, and eventually they came to terms.
McLaren, Williams and Tyrrell protested this by rejecting the proposed Concorde Agreement (negotiations for which started as early as 1993).
Ken Tyrrell in particular was enraged by the fact that Ecclestone, as the president of FOCA, had negotiated the transfer of the rights from the current organization to his own company.
By taking a stand against the actions of Ecclestone, the FIA and the wider commercial aspects of Formula One, McLaren, Williams and Tyrrell lost both influence in the sport and the income which they would have received as signatories.
[11] On 7 December 2004, at a meeting attended by the bosses of all teams except Ferrari, Ecclestone offered a payout of £260,000,000 over three years in return for unanimous renewal of the fifth Concorde Agreement, which would guarantee the continuation of Formula One in its present form at least until the expiration of that contract.
[15] On 27 March 2006, the five Grand Prix Manufacturers Association-backed teams - BMW Sauber, Renault, Honda, McLaren and Toyota - submitted their applications for the 2008 season, agreeing to stay in the sport until 2012.
After a dispute between FOTA and the FIA in the first half of 2009, a new Concorde Agreement was signed by Mosley and all of the teams, although Sauber, in transition as majority owner of BMW, had announced, shortly beforehand, its intention of withdrawing from the sport at the end of the season, so waited until a controlling stake of the team was returned to Peter Sauber before signing.
[29] During the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix weekend, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff declared his dissatisfaction with the terms of the new agreement, which was to introduce a budget cap from the 2021 season and change the prize money distribution.