Bernie Ecclestone - Deal maker extraordinaire.
Picture the scene. 1980 F1 was amateur racing, no schedule, loose rules, zero safety. It was a very experimental time as teams had to make their own deals with the event promoter. If, of course, the race wasn't cancelled due to low numbers. The TV did cover some of the races, but only if they managed to get enough cars on the grid.
However, all was about to change.
It's 1981, and Bernie (ex used car salesman) sells the teams on the idea of a contract - What would become the infamous Concorde Agreement. The contact committed the teams to race regularly to a schedule. This stroke of expert deal-making was precisely what the sport was missing - a structure.
He took his contract to the TV companies and negotiated guaranteed coverage for every race. With the deal signed, the door marked sponsorship immediately swings open.
The most simplistic version of this deal is a three-way split. The teams controlled their own commercial rights via Bernie's company Formula One Promotions and Administration (FOPA) which negotiated the deals for them and took a share of the proceeds. The remainder went to F1’s governing body the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA)
The rest, as they say- is history, and some 40 years later, Liberty Media agreed to buy a controlling interest in the Formula One Group for $4.4 billion (£3.3 billion), and Bernie steps down.
Obviously, the F1 story has much more detail than this article suggests, but the point is that the sport's success came from one deal. One good idea - actioned at the right time and structured for success. A deal-making masterclass.
Remember, you don't need an F1 race team to build a deal-making strategy. Far from it. Most businesses can use some form of this strategy to grow from where they are today.
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