Commercial Rights

There's been a bit of fuss over whether the FIA should get involved with the commercial side of the sport recently (there's an EI anti-trust case ongoing). And now Max is saying that manufacturer based teams shouldn't get any revenue from the sport. Instead it should go to smaller independent teams so that they can compete against the big budget teams.

Now given that a team, once it becomes successful, tends to attract manufacturer support, that appears to me to mean that the teams that don't do well in races would be subsidised in future, whereas ones that do well, won't.

The question I keep asking myself, is why does Mosley get involved with these things? If he wants to keep money in the sport, he shouldn't go around selling the commercial rights for paltry sums. And he should insist that only a percentage of the income for the commercial rights holder can be paid out. The British Government is not renowned for its skill in organising privatisations, but Camelot, the company that runs the UK national lottery has a fixed percentage profit and is doing very nicely thank you.

The FIA is by nature a political organisation. But they should at least allow natural competiveness to be rewarded in a competetive sport.