The latest report on the financial state of F1 revealed that the sport's revenues dropped by $200 million last year, as the economic downturn hurt the sport's finances. Despite the loss, the overall revenue for the year remained a cool $4.6 billion.
The financial review of the last year, published by F1's industry monitor Formula Money, revealed that the drop was largely down to a reduction in spending on the part of impoverished team owners, as F1 struggled to weather the financial storm.
In the last 12 months, Honda, BMW and Toyota have all announced their withdrawals from F1, citing the economic crisis as their main reasons.
There was better news on the commercial side of the sport, with the F1 Group posting higher profits following an increase in race fees and sponsorship of the sport itself. But teams felt the pinch sponsor-wise, with an 8% decline in sponsor money from last season.
The report details a number of key areas of F1's murky finances, and has been published for the last three years, but this new edition is one of the most eagerly-awaited from a gawping rubber-necking point of view, as it lays bare how much the economic crisis has affected the major aspects of the sport.
According to the report, team owner spending dropped over 30%, from $1.6 billion in 2008 to $1.1 billion in 2009. This loss is explained as a combination of the loss of Honda's bottomless pockets of cash, as well as an overall shrinking of budgets in the remaining teams.
The teams were also hit with a major decline in sponsorship money. Formula Money estimates that total sponsorship income for the teams dropped by 8%, from $836.9 million last year to $770.75 million in 2009.
However, sponsorship of the F1 brand directly was swelled by nearly 80%, thanks mainly to new deals with electronics company LG and music moguls Universal, who organised the shamelessly naff "F1 Rocks" event at the Singapore GP weekend, which featured performances from acts as unquantifiably mundane as The Black Eyed Peas, No Doubt, Thingymabob and Whatshertits.
That increase in sponsorship was backed by a rise in money from race hosting fees, which rose 11% from $403.5 million to $448 million, and a 18% rise in TV revenues thanks to expensive new deals in major F1 markets like Spain and the UK.
Overall then, the result of the economic downturn on F1 seems to broadly be that the teams and tracks are struggling like never before to keep up the mortgage payments, but Bernie Ecclestone is still making a lot of money. So business largely as usual.
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