Monetise This: How F1 Represents The Over-Commercialisation Of Sport

Formula 1 has been a huge part of my life since I was about six years old. And Liberty Media has taken it away from me.

That might sound like a slightly hyperbolic statement — after all, contractually, it’s Liberty that owns F1’s commercial rights and not me — but it speaks about the importance of Grand Prix racing to the person I am.

My 16th birthday present was tickets to a Grand Prix (Silverstone 2004).

My 18th birthday present was tickets to a Grand Prix (Monaco 2006).

Motorsport journalism was what I wanted to do when I grew up (which, for a while and with some success, I did).

But the Formula 1 that I grew up with simply doesn’t exist any more. Of course, there’s always the risk of rose-tinted spectacles around childhood memories and “things not being what they used to be”. But even accounting for the natural evolution and modernisation of the sport, since Liberty came in, the transformation has been enormous.

Now, those of you who are marketingy, businessy types who only see things in balance sheets and engagement metrics — if you use the words ‘brand’ and ‘experience’ a lot, this probably means you — will point out that F1 is in rude financial health. 

And you’re right. More people are watching than ever before, teams are worth more than ever before, and fans are throwing more money at the sport than ever before. My three-day general admission ticket for Silverstone in 2004 was £90 (that’s around £165 today, adjusting for inflation). This year, the equivalent ticket was around £350 — and Silverstone recorded the biggest crowd in F1 history.

But what’s the human cost behind all this? It’s become abundantly clear to me with each passing year that F1 doesn’t want fans like me who like cars, racing and engineering. They want fans who buy into the drama: personalities, social media content, Drive To Survive, the celebrities and girlfriends in the pits, the music acts at the circuits, and so on. Why? Because they can make more money out of them than they can from long-term fans like me.

‘Ooh, look, a car overtook another car’

A lot of these fans lack any detailed understanding of the sport — and Liberty are actually happy about that fact. Here’s what F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali was quoted as saying in a media call earlier this week:

“No one is interested in how you drive your car. The people are interested if you're overtaking or not.”

“I had an incredible and interesting discussion with [Star Wars creator] George Lucas on Saturday. He was in Hungary and he was giving me an incredible view on how the new fans are watching Formula 1. And I think that he gave us an incredible [clarity] to see how we can really simplify things, because the new fans are not understanding the truth what is behind the scenes. They are fascinated on the fact that there is a lot of action.”

I will overlook the fact that Domenicali’s insight on how new fans watch F1 came from an 82-year-old man who was responsible for a planet full of teddy bears in Return of the Jedi. What I won’t overlook is his desire to simplify things, and his assertion that I’m not interested in how the cars are driven. That is a direct attack to the heart and soul of F1, to me and, I suspect, to many people who have followed and loved the sport for a long time.

The difference between the two types of fans was most apparent to me a few weeks ago, watching the British Grand Prix at my local pub. My local is a big sports bar which has long attracted decent numbers for F1 races, in no small part because I live in Milton Keynes, right in the heart of ‘Motorsport Valley’, and there tend to be quite a few Red Bull Racing employees and their families and friends who come in.

The pub was busy for Silverstone race day: quite a few F1 ‘regulars’ who I’ve known from watching races there for several years, and lots of younger fans, most of whom were in the most up-to-date team merchandise. Of course, it isn’t for me to make the assumption that they’re automatically ‘new’ fans, but as events unfolded during the race, it was clear that most of them were.

There was a point mid-race where Lewis Hamilton overtook George Russell coming through Woodcote and onto the old pit straight. Most in the pub started cheering. I was just getting pissed off with it. I said to my friend next to me: “Well, this makes no difference: Lewis has probably run out of battery and George will just fly straight back past him down the Hangar Straight in about 20 seconds’ time”.

And sure enough, through Copse, Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel they went… and as they reached the Hangar Straight, the Mercedes drove straight back past the Ferrari as if it was stationary. 

“OH LOOK, HE’S RUN OUT OF FUCKING BATTERY, WHAT A SURPRISE!” I shouted. Everyone apart from the dyed-in-the-wool regulars looked at me like I was from the planet Zog.

At the end of the race, all the younger fans were buzzing and enthused about the race they’d just seen. All us regulars grumbled at the bar. The line “well, that was a fucking joke” was used more than once. Because we could understand what we’d seen: that Silverstone is an energy-poor track particularly ill-suited to the new rules, which made for some farcical overtaking. Everyone else just saw overtaking.

I’m not saying this to ‘gatekeep’ or to look down on newer fans. If they enjoy what they get from F1, then that’s great for them that Liberty has given them something they like. It’s just a shame that the emotional pulls of long-standing fans like me had to be systematically taken apart to achieve it.

David Mitchell was right!

Neither am I saying this to take pot-shots at Liberty specifically. One of the main reasons I wanted to write this piece is because F1 is far from the only sport that is being monetised and commercialised to within an inch of its life, and losing its heart, soul and guiding principles in the process.

I mean, look at football, for Christ’s sake. David Mitchell made his famous ‘Watch The Football’ sketch all the way back in 2008 — and it turns out, 18 years later, that he was bang on the money about how football is marketed. For those of you who haven’t seen it (and if you haven’t, take two minutes and click on this YouTube link, it’s hilarious), it parodies a Sky Sports-style football advert, with such hyped-up lines as:

“CONSTANT, DIZZYING, 24-HOUR, YEAR-LONG, ENDLESS FOOTBALL!”

“THE FOOTBALL IS OFFICIALLY GOING ON FOREVER!”

“IT WILL NEVER BE FINALLY DECIDED WHO HAS WON THE FOOTBALL!”

“THERE IS STILL EVERYTHING TO PLAY FOR… AND FOREVER TO PLAY IT IN!”

We now have a football landscape where club teams play 60-odd games a season, including extra Champions League games and random friendlies all over the world for more cash. Where the World Cup had 16 more teams, ‘hydration breaks’ and a half-time show added to it to make more money. Where ticket prices and TV subscription costs are higher than ever. And yet — despite all the moaning you see on internet message boards and the occasional fan protests — millions of people are still falling over themselves to throw money at the sport.

In cricket, we have The Hundred: made-up franchises in eight major grounds around the country that have no connection to the existing county game. Stakes in all eight of them were sold over the winter to private investors for big money. Three have had their names changed to bring them in line with their sister teams in the Indian Premier League. Traditional cricket fans absolutely hate it. And yet, despite a small dip this year, attendances are strong compared to the county game. Only England matches and T20 Blast Finals Day consistently beat it.

The money men and women in football, cricket and F1 all know that they’ve got the public by the short and curlies. The “fear of missing out” or of not being able to join the conversation with friends or at work (egged on by social media) is too strong. And from there, they can keep adding more and more to their sports to maximise their investments.

But more doesn’t always mean better. In my opinion, the group stage of the World Cup was too long, with too little jeopardy and with too much mediocre football. F1’s sprint races, held at a selection of events each year, tend to be processional and uneventful. MotoGP’s sprint races, held at every event, have contributed to an increase in rider injuries: in 2023, the first season they were held, every single race weekend had at least one full-time rider out injured.

All of this expansion pleases those with a financial interest in sport enormously. And it serves the casual fan very well: Barry Hearn, whose Matchroom organisation has transformed the sport of darts, has often said that sport is like a soap opera. And he’s right. But it leaves people like me, for whom sport has always been central to my interests and my social life, utterly cold.

Why the Irish have the answer

So where do I go from here (now that I’ve had my vent and got all this off my chest)?

It leaves me in search of sports where you can still put the storylines, money and razzmatazz to one side, and still enjoy it for what it is: a contest between people and teams. But at a professional, televised level, that’s becoming harder and harder to find. (As an aside, it’s one of the reasons I started playing village cricket, even though I’m an utterly awful cricketer).

I did find an absolute gem though, partly by chance, last Sunday: County Mayo’s first All-Ireland Gaelic football title win in 75 years, after 11 lost finals and the urban legend of the ‘Mayo curse’. And it was obvious what the win meant to the people of Mayo: the main Irish news on Monday night was live from their homecoming parade, as the team brought the trophy back to their home ground, MacHale Park in Castlebar. An estimated 40,000 people were there: that’s nearly 30% of the population of the entire county!

And all this for a sport played entirely by amateurs who are almost always born in, or long-term residents of, the counties they represent. I used to work with a guy from County Kerry who loved the fact that one of Kerry’s star players was his bank manager.

That’s proper sport right there. For me, it’s not about how much money people are making, who they’re going out with, which celebrities they’re friends with, or how many likes they have on social media. I enjoy watching sport because I like a contest, and seeing who’s better — or the best — at something that involves a lot of talent and skill.

And that’s something that Liberty Media, for all their business acumen and marketing expertise, will never be able to monetise.