Bernie Ecclestone’s ousting as Formula 1 supremo will take the sport in a different, digital direction under new American owners Liberty Media, but there is much work to be done in the months and years ahead.
“F1 has huge potential with multiple untapped opportunities,” new chief executive Chase Carey said after ending 86-year-old Ecclestone’s 40-year reign on Monday (NZT Tuesday).
“We will work…to enhance the racing experience and add new dimensions to the sport and we look forward to sharing these plans over time.”
Carey, appointed Formula 1 chairman in September after serving as vice-chairman of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, and Liberty Media’s chief executive, Greg Maffei, have both said there is a lot they want to do differently.
Maffei has spoken of more races in Latin America, Asia and the United States while Carey has indicated that Liberty wants to safeguard the sport’s historic venues in Europe, ramp up marketing efforts and engage the fans more.
There has been talk of treating every race like a Super Bowl, creating a buzz that extends far beyond the racetrack, but without ‘Americanising’ the sport’s fundamentals or alienating the purists.
“We think there is a real opportunity to engage the American public in a new and exciting way, and probably one of the components is putting another race there and in a destination city,” Carey said.
“We want these events to be big, broad. I’ve talked about 21 Super Bowls. We want them to have that type of feel which probably means a city like New York, LA, Miami or Las Vegas that people would come to for the week.
“The sport would be at the centre of it, but there would be a lot of stuff going on for everybody throughout that time frame.”
Liberty Media has plenty of experience and resources, with interests in the Atlanta Braves baseball team, satellite radio service Sirius XM, entertainment group Live Nation and minority interests in Time Warner and Viacom.
Where Ecclestone’s business model was based on television rights and ever-increasing hosting fees that have left circuits with little chance of making a profit, Liberty have emphasised a shift towards sustainability and new revenue streams.
“Less than one per cent of revenues are from digital,” Maffei said in September after Liberty agreed to acquire the commercial rights from CVC Capital Parthers.
“They really have no organised digital effort. I think there’s a lot of things that can be done around gaming, VR [virtual reality] and AR [augmented reality].
“There’s an enormous amount of video feed and data about the races that we are already capturing that we are not in any way processing incrementally for the dedicated fan,” he added.
Where Ecclestone was often at odds with the teams, adopting a divide and rule approach, Carey has sounded more collegiate and inclusive with talk of cost controls and ensuring a fairer share of the spoils.
That will be easier said than done, with the likes of glamour team Ferrari in particular handsomely rewarded for historic performances while smaller teams struggle to survive.
The appointment of Ross Brawn in a management role overseeing motorsport activities has also raised hopes among fans and participants preparing for the first race in Australia in two months’ time.
Brawn worked closely at Ferrari with Jean Todt, now the head of the governing FIA, and was also a principal at Honda before leading his own team and then Mercedes.
