A History of Organizational Change by Hans Erik Næss

Author:Hans Erik Næss
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030482701
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The reality, Mosley argues, was that F1 needed some form of transition period to harvest sponsorship from other sectors than tobacco if it were to be upheld as the prime motoring championship. Moreover, he hints at hypocrisy as both UK and EU governments are doing little to reduce the business imperatives for tobacco companies elsewhere, claiming that what these companies are spending on F1 is much less than they get in subsidies from the political spectrum. Then the committee member asked Ecclestone: ‘Is it a nonsense to suggest that your donations influenced the direction of Government policy on this very, very important issue, this life and death issue?’ Ecclestone: ‘I sincerely hope that you are not suggesting for one moment that that is what it was for.’ Member of Parliament: ‘I am suggesting nothing. I know what the press were suggesting. I know what journalists were suggesting to me at the time.’ Ecclestone: ‘If you did not suggest that you would be absolutely correct.’6

What is indisputable, however, is that F1 teams had strong financial incentives to be protected from a ban on tobacco advertising. The most prestigious team, Ferrari, even named itself after its main sponsor between 1997 and 2010: Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro . According to Bruce Grant-Braham (2009), cigarette brands and F1 had been Siamese twins in developing the championship as a commercial spectacle. Marlboro, for example, had used its motorsport relationship to promote, ‘a particular image of adventure, courage and virility’ (Grant-Braham, 2009, p. 181). To no one’s surprise, then, cigarette companies found new ways to promote their products. A US study found that despite a federal ban on the advertising of tobacco products on television, ‘during the period 1997 through 1999, tobacco companies were able to achieve 169 hours of television advertising exposure and $410.5 million of advertising value for their products by sponsoring televised motorsports events’ (Siegel, 2001, p. 1102). Mosley, however, initiated his own inquiry back in 1997 to examine the claim that if tobacco logos appearing in Formula 1 cause people to start smoking, the case for the total elimination of tobacco sponsorship would be overwhelming. Unfortunately for everyone, it produced few results, even though Mosley, during the UK Parliament hearing, argued that he:

wrote to the Minister of Health in each of the countries where there is a Grand Prix. We wrote letters to the World Health Organisation, to the World Bank in December, giving a deadline of 1 July 1999 for receipt of the evidence and we also placed an advertisement in the Economist in January 1999. Of the governments to which we wrote letters…. we received replies from the UK Government, the German Government, the Argentine and Canadian Governments as well. Of the 14 governments those are the only ones. The European Commission wrote back; the World Health Organisation and the World Bank wrote back. The World Health Organisation referred us to a report from the World Bank as being the most authoritative. We wrote to the World Bank and asked for that report.

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