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What has one of the longest seasons of any sport, has the highest TV audience in the world and costs about two
hundred million dollars a year to run and has a micro-managing globally-hated boss
If you answered Formula One, you’d be correct. F1 is run by a madman of a mere 81 years old by the name Bernie
Ecclestone. If he were managing the NFL, he would have been fired years ago. If he was the Police Commissioner of
New York, there would be no crime in that city. So how does an old man have so much power of the most expensive
sport in the world
To find out you don’t have to look too far back. Beginning in the 1970s, Bernie Ecclestone rearranged the
management of Formula One's commercial rights. He is widely credited with transforming the sport into the multi
billion-dollar business it is now. When Ecclestone bought the Brabham team during 1971, he gained a seat on the
Formula One Constructors' Association and during 1978 became its President. Since then, he has ruled F1 with an iron
fist. “You can’t afford it Go away!”, “You need what Find someone who gives a damn!”. Few love him but
everyone adores him because, like it or not, if you want to be in F1 you go through Bernie. He’s one of the richest
men in the world, reportedly worth US$6 billion. He’s the guy that bought his daughter the $100 million home in
Beverly Hills formerly belonging to… He turned down our request for an interview and can you blame him He
turned down 60 Minutes.
Along the way, he has made enemies and won admirers - sometimes in the same person - but standing trial on
bribery charges in Munich in August presented him with one of his biggest challenges yet. A challenge that could have
seen him imprisoned for a decade. During the hearing, Ecclestone allegedly paid a German court £60m to end the
trial, in which he was accused of paying a German banker £26m to ensure that a company Ecclestone favored could
buy a stake in F1. Under German law, Ecclestone was able to pay to end the trial.
In the normal business world, any Chief Executive who is the subject of such serious criminal charges cannot hope to
hold on to his position.
Ecclestone is one of the richest
men in the world with a reported
fortune of $5 billion. He’s also
endorsed Hitler and degraded
women.
But this is not the normal business world and Ecclestone is most certainly not your regular businessman. Any Chief
Executive who has (allegedly) referred to women as "domestic appliances" or praised Adolf Hitler for being "able to
get things done" would have been shown the door with haste and sued for millions in the USA, but not Bernie! Why
Probably because of his remarkable achievements, his all-pervasive influence in F1 and, since the sport began trading
as a commodity, his success in making money for his bosses. That last attribute may yet keep him in a job, now that
the criminal bribery case has ended, which was more serious than a related civil case in London's High Court, which
has now been dismissed.
His boss - CVC Chairman, Donald McKenzie - has, before now, told the High Court that Ecclestone would have to be
fired if he was convicted of a criminal offence. There is another case pending - and related - in the United States,
where financial firm Bluewaters has sued him, claiming they were the highest bidder in the sale of F1 in 2006.
Ecclestone's journey began in the 1950s, when he was a less-than-successful racer and then a manager of promising
British F1 driver Stuart Lewis-Evans.
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When Lewis-Evans died in a fiery accident in 1958, Ecclestone disappeared off the motor racing radar for the best
part of a decade, re-emerging in the late 1960s as the manager of another promising driver, Austrian Jochen Rindt.