Jan.15 (GMM) The impasse over the distribution of commercial income in formula one is no closer to a resolution, the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport reports
On one side of the dispute is the F1 teams’ FOTA alliance, backed up by FIA president Max Mosley, who insist that Bernie Ecclestone should release more than the 50 per cent of total revenue that is currently given to the sport’s competitors
“In no other sport do the participants get so little,” FOTA chairman and Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo is quoted as saying
But F1 chief executive Ecclestone, who has already publicly scolded Montezemolo over the issue of team income, responded: “I would like Luca to call me with the names of the sports that pay more.”nnThe 78-year-old billionaire added: “No-one has to take part in formula one if they don’t want to.”nnAuto Motor und Sport claims that Ecclestone’s cautionary response to the teams’ push over income is to threaten a ‘TV tax’: where the teams receiving more live broadcast exposure pay a sort of revenue ‘tax’ to the less exposed teams
The FIA, meanwhile, is siding with FOTA, but warns that it is in the other players’ interests to come to a solution
Mosley claims that if the F1 bubble was to burst, the governing FIA would continue to exist and “only the teams and Bernie would be out of business”
“Thus all the rights would return to the FIA and we would have to create something out of the ruins,” he said
