Carey: F1 must be a shared vision and partnership with teams

Liberty Media acquired a turn-key operation when they bought Formula 1 for $4.6 billion in 2016. What they found worked but it was all very murky. Now they need to plot the path forward, in other words, the future is in their hands.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Carey recalled, "The day we announced the deal, Bernie and I got stuck on a kerb with a broadcaster and had a debate. Bernie was saying the sport needed a dictator. I said the sport needs a leader."

"Bernie's a one-man show. He's not used to dealing with an organisation and delegating responsibilities. Bernie is a brilliant deal-maker. I don't know that he's a business builder or a strategy guy. I'd never play poker with Bernie."

"He's a very crafty, clever deal-maker but at some point businesses need to be more than deals. He didn't believe in marketing, while digital was for 20-year-olds and he said he didn't care about them because they don't have money."

"He had great success. I don't want to take that away. But in the last five to 10 years, Formula One wasn't doing a lot of the things it needed to do to really achieve its potential."

"We found an organisation that had not been doing the things it needed to do and hadn't had the capabilities it needed to really fulfil its potential. There were cultural issues. It's a sport that was very much driven by short-term deals. There was no long-term plan," added Carey.

Finding agreement among stakeholders is the first part of the plan for the F1 chief and his team. Everything from governance through to rules and budget caps are on the table, but how far things are at this stage is uncertain.

"We're engaged on it," Carey said of talks. "One of the things I want to bring to Formula One is more of a shared vision and sense of partnership with the key players, particularly the teams. Formula One in the past had a bit of a divide and conquer mentality."

"We want to make the events like Super Bowls. I've been to 25 Super Bowls and I thought last year's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix really felt like a Super Bowl. The race was at the centre but it had that breadth of activity, from the Thursday right through to the Sunday night."

"You want that energy and excitement and the event to really be like something where you feel like you're at the centre of the universe."

The Superbowl story, which was rolled out when they first bought the game, is not new and is also part of Carey's vision to make Formula 1 less posh and more accessible.

He added for the umpteenth time, "One of the comments I heard early on was that Formula One had got too exclusive. I also felt the sport said 'no' to too many things. There wasn't openness to doing and trying new things."

"We're finding new ways to engage cities and countries. In Italy, we had a Ferrari floating on the Grand Canal in Venice."

While Formula 1 embarks on a questionable route with a street race in Vietnam, Carey knows America remains a major market that has yet to be fully tapped by Formula 1.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that Stateside there is a much more motorsport savvy fanbase to nurture than they will find in a third world nation whose money (hundreds of millions) would be better spent on hospitals and schools than a silly motor race, that no one cares about in the said country.

Carey gave his take on the scenario, "Historically the US has two forms of motor racing, but Nascar races in Tuscaloosa and places that are probably not on the tip of the tongue for the world, while we [F1] race in Singapore and Milan. The US market is one of the most underdeveloped. We've barely scratched the surface."

The biggest improvement in the post-Ecclestone era is hos Formula 1 have embraced new media, their website, the YouTube channel, Twitter, Facebook and general media services are 5-star and where they should be for a sport of this stature with so much content on tap.

Carey explained, "When you wrestle with how you compete with Amazon and Google... and then have competitors that are consolidating, like with AT&T and Time Warner, I think you either need scale or really unique assets."

"There are too many firms that have really neither today. It bodes well for something like Formula One because they're all multi-hundred billion-dollar entities and they all want unique content."

"They can all keep throwing money at talent and producing more and more scripted series but you can't produce more Formula Ones," added Carey.

https://www.grandprix247.com/2017/01/26/bratches-we-are-going-to-polish-the-f1-brand/