09/03/2008
NEWS STORY
Is there anything that Flavio Briatore doesn't own? We all know about the obligatory yachts, hunting lodges and penthouses. Then come the world-renowned restaurants, eye-wateringly expensive clothing chains as well as London's Queen's Park Rangers football club. Flamboyant Flav also owns an F1 driver management company which has had Fernando Alonso in its stable and a report in today's Mail on Sunday newspaper reveals that he has another Spanish asset stuffed in his Tardis-like trophy cabinet.
The report, written by Pitpass contributors Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid, explains that the unassumingly-named Stacourt Limited in Kent actually has the rights to broadcast F1 in Spain. According to Stacourt's latest set of accounts it is owned by none other than Briatore's British Virgin Islands-based Formula FB Business and ultimately controlled by the FB Trust. This is different to the typical arrangement which sees the Bernie Ecclestone-run Formula One Management (FOM) selling the rights directly to broadcasters and pocketing the cash. In fact, Stacourt's arrangement with the television rights is the only known one of its type. It's an arrangement that Briatore has done very nicely from.
In 2006 alone Stacourt paid out £4.8 million to Formula FB Business and the Trust and the running total since the business was set up in 2002 stands at a whopping £9.9 million. The road to these riches has of course been paved by Briatore's protegé Alonso.
When Stacourt was incorporated in 2002 F1 was removed from free-to-air broadcasting in Spain as none of the national channels bid for the rights. But after Alonso became F1's youngest-ever race winner in 2003, their value hit top gear.
The following year, the Telecinco station bought the rights for two years for an estimated annual price of £3.5 million. After just five races in 2005, Telecinco had an audience share of 48.8% with 3.9 million viewers. Then the 6 million viewers who tuned in to the Spanish Grand Prix made it the most watched race in the history of Spanish television. On the back of Alonso's first F1 world championship that year, Telecinco extended its contract and the value of the rights accelerated. Stacourt's turnover almost doubled from £5.9 million to £10.7 million in 2006, the first year of the new deal.
In fact, the company has been making so much money that it has built up a stash of £7 million cash in the bank. That's more than Williams, Red Bull Racing and the Renault team itself have managed to put away. However, there is an end in sight to the growth of this gigantic pile.
Telecinco will no longer broadcast F1 from 2009 until at least 2013 having lost out to the Spanish La Sexta channel. The deal was announced in May last year and estimates have suggested that it could be worth as much as triple the amount currently being paid by Telecinco. Even more surprisingly the announcement stated that the station had signed the contract with FOM, not Stacourt. Nevertheless, it makes one wonder if there are any other arrangements in F1 like this out there.