Tobacco Ad bans extends

[Super Tourer]

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns11951.html

News that Australia is about to sign up to the World Health Authority Tobacco Convention will cast potential further shadow over the F1 calendar.

Crucially Malaysia (the most recent new market opened to F1) has also signed up to the convention bringing the total number of included countries to 70. This includes some mooted future F1 venues including India, South Africa, Mexico and Argentina.

This will inadvertantly (In my opinion) place increased pressure on the FIA and Bernie E's FOM organisation.

The FIA created a voluntary code on tobacco advertising that was to be enforced in 2006, however they realised that cutting off tobacco revenue would create a financial void that the teams would struggle to fill, and appear to be trying to include countries that allow tobacco advertising onto the calendar, replacing those that do not.

However with the number of countries signing up to the convention rising all the time this will prove increasingly difficult, and strengthen the hand of the car makers, who in their current negotiations with Bernie over a vastly increased slice of the cake, could argue that a major supply of tobacco revenue will eventually wither completely. Thus forcing them to require extra revenue from the TV revenue pot, the lions share of which goes to Bernie E.

The flip side of this is that in order to preserve tobacco sponsorship Bernie E will have to look to even more emerging countries, not yet signed up to the WHO convention. However these are likely to have a relatively fledgling car market of less interest to premuim brands like Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar, but of more interest to volume producers like Honda and Reanult, indeed Renault have recently announced plans to build a very low cost car to service emerging car markets like China.

It will be interesting to see the political battle play out. Will governments seek to exempt Formula One for the ban even though they have signed up to it, in order to safe guard races. At what level will the tobacco brands themselves decide that F1 is no longer viable for them, due to the probable diminishing number of races they can carry branding?

It's fair to argue that at least two teams would not make the grid without tobacco money, and one other would find it's budget severly dented. Teams have been actively seeking non-tobacco brands, but Williams aside, have not been able to attract premium brands that could afford to fill the tobacco funding gap, as generally these companies can spend their money anywhere, so F1 does not have the same pull. If they want to be on TV they buy advertising space, something that tobacco brands can no longer do in most countries where F1 is televised.

All this will play out into the political games behind the scenes, and could shape the calendar in future years.

[climb]

This time of economic troubles helps Bernie.
As someone has showed recently about Silverstone: the economic favouirable impact of a F1 GP is too big to be lost for a tobacco-banning policy that gives no return.
One way or another most countries will manage to grant F1 an exception, as Belgium did.
Thus the problem for Bernie is only in the medium/long term.

[Liz]

And Bernie is 71 years old -- he has a limited medium term and no long term. Can you say apres-moi, le deluge ?

[Super Tourer]

This creates a dilemma that many countries will wrestle with, exempting one area of sport from tobacco sponsorship bans will only create an outburst from other sports or organisations that will argue their corner as a suitable case for exemption.

The case of the UK portrayed the potential loss of the British GP as damaging the UK motorsport industry as a whole, all of which was conducted under the heading of Bernie E's ongoing dispute with the BRDC over facilities at Silverstone, although sopme observers alleged that it was a ruse to hoof another tobacco unfriendly venue from the calendar.

In the case of Silverstone, some Labour politicians expressed concern at pumping public money into 'saving' an event, participated in largely by multi-millionaires, which in their view made nonsense to support an industry so blatantly awash with cash , but as ever the threat of potential job losses will see some sort of investment in the 'area'.

However for countries that have no motorsport industry, I wonder how many politicians will go out on a limb and exempt what is only one event per year, having knowingly signed up to the convention on tobacco.

[ASCII Man]

Originally posted by Liz
And Bernie is 71 years old -- he has a limited medium term and no long term. Can you say apres-moi, le déluge ?

After me, the flood? :confused: