Quote:
Originally Posted by deggis
If subtracting sponsorship from the budgets, I wouldn't be surprised if for example Mercedes ends up spending less of their own money than for example Audi.
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I highly doubt that. Don't buy the $150-200 m allegelly expended by VAG teams either. If they were putting that much money into it, why wouldn't they be in F1, which has much more visibility as it's a shorter races format based heavily on driver's fanboys?
Even Le Mans has relatively low repercution, compared to NASCAR or F1, so I will never believe anybody expends more than F1 teams in WEC.
Le Mans has almost 300k attendance and +1 million viewers in French tv, alone. From attendance alone, ACO should a revenue around $20 m Euros, as tickets are 75 Euros. French tv + Eurosport/Fox Sports/Japanese TV should also bring some considerable income to them. Unfortunately, I would guess ACO keeps a big part of that and only pays out a few in prizes. Can't see anybody putting more than $50 m dollars in a WEC season, tbh, given the revenue generated and visibility/repercution surrounding it.
The reason I believe a BMW participation is possible is their finances. They had only less profit than Toyota and VAG, last year