McLaren’s Struggle to Land a Title Sponsor Highlights a Larger Problem for F1

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: January 9, 2015

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It has now been more than 10 months since McLaren CEO Ron Dennis guaranteed his team would have a new title sponsor early in the 2014 season. Now, racing director Eric Boullier says the team would be fine if it had to go another season without one.

"We can afford to run without a title sponsor; that's a privilege," Boullier told ESPN F1. "We want it because it's another step we can go and we have many projects we would like to do, but to be honest, today, we can afford to run without."

While that certainly appears true for McLaren, Formula One has already lost two teams from the 2014 grid, while others continue to struggle financially.



If McLaren—one of the oldest, most successful and most popular teams in the sport, despite their recent struggles—are having so much trouble finding a company willing to pay whatever rate Dennis deems acceptable, it is bad news for other teams.

If the teams cannot attract sponsors, they will not be able to afford to go racing. Sure, teams like Mercedes and Ferrari have big car manufacturers behind them, using F1 as a marketing platform. But the independent teams, like Sauber and Force India, depend on sponsorship money for their budgets.

And now the teams are not only competing against one another—there is a bigger fish in the pond. In recent years, F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone has been scooping up potential sponsors and signing deals with them to be the official this or that of F1.



For example, two years ago, Rolex signed on as the official timekeeper and timepiece of F1. Agreements like that are great for the investors who own the sport's commercial rights and they are great for the companies, who get much more exposure as an F1 sponsor than as the sponsor of a specific team.

They are not great for the teams, though. They cannot compete with Formula One management in terms of the value they can offer poten...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1

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