“Let me show you something,” Bernie Ecclestone told me in his shiny black Formula One Management motorhome. He pressed the buttons on his mobile phone very hard as if they were the keys of a particularly recalcitrant typewriter. Then, not understanding the results he had produced, he pecked hungrily at the buttons again.
He looked at the screen, squinting in bewilderment. Finally, he hurled the instrument to the floor in frustration. He could have broken it but he probably wouldn’t know the difference anyway.
Ecclestone is not great with mobiles. And when it comes to social media he has looked as lost as luggage. “I’m not interested in tweeting, Facebook or whatever this nonsense is,” he said a couple of years ago, although since then FOM have made an effort to come to terms with the modern age, even recently opening up a social media department at their London headquarters.
But Liberty Media, with their imminent purchase of CVC’s controlling shareholding in Formula One, will sell the sport as never before. As well as social media, they will use their expertise in promotion, marketing, media and digital rights to take the sport to a new level of awareness and participation across multiple platforms, including mobiles, tablets and smart TVs.
The new F1 chairman, Chase Carey, who will become the face of the sport, wants to expand the digital footprint. He says: “There are multiple dimensions to developing the digital opportunities in Formula One. “There is the marketing potential in telling the Formula One story, and it’s a great story with some of the most attractive stars in the world – great drivers, great teams, great brands, great technology.”
Americans know how to sell things. And they know how to put on a show. We have seen that at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, who have hosted the US Grand Prix since 2012.
Expect Carey to go in the direction the Circuit of the Americas co-founder Bobby Epstein explained in Texas last year. “F1 has got to make the sport about personalities,” he said. “That’s what Nascar does very well. Formula One can learn a lot from Nascar, from Hollywood. People connect with people. They don’t connect with metal.”
And in the words of Cota’s former chief executive Jason Dial, F1 must “grow the pie, expand and engage the fanbase and make it younger”.
That’s another thing. Carey will not go along with Ecclestone’s view of the young. His attitude seems not dissimilar to WC Fields who, when asked if he liked children replied: “I do if they’re properly cooked.”
In 2014 Ecclestone said: “I don’t know why people want to get to the so-called young generation. Why do they want to do that? Is it to sell them something? Most of these kids haven’t got any money.
“I’d rather get to the 70-year-old guy who’s got plenty of cash. So, there’s no point trying to reach these kids because they won’t buy any of the products here. Young kids will see the Rolex brand but are they going to go and buy one? They can’t afford it. Or our other sponsor, UBS — these kids don’t care about banking. They haven’t got enough money to put in the bloody banks anyway.”
There is another area where Liberty Media are likely to succeed where Ecclestone has failed, and that is the United States itself.
Ecclestone, to borrow from the tagline for the film Easy Rider, is the man who went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere. Formula One has had more circuits in the US than anywhere else.
There have been 10 all told– Sebring, Riverside, Watkins Glen, Long Beach, Caesars Palace, Detroit, Dallas, Phoenix, Indianapolis and Austin – but the sport has never taken a hold over there, although the crippling fees they have been charged has not helped.
Teams and their sponsors need F1 to succeed in the biggest market of them all and to do that the United States must host two or three races so F1 fans become used to watching events in their own time zone.
Against a background of declining crowds and haemorrhaging TV audiences the arrival of Liberty Media may be as well-timed as the US cavalry in countless westerns.
Formula One, for all its global glamour, is in reality a rather introverted village, a conservative and rather self-obsessed troupe who have not cared enough about their adoring supporters.
Carey and the man behind Liberty Media, John Malone – known as the Darth Vader of Wall Street – will change all that.
