Fast company
By admin • Jun 30th, 2008
What’s MerchantBridge’s interest in Formula One?
Well, Spyker decided that for its brand awareness the opportunity of buying the Midland F1 team would be ideal. There are only 11 teams now, and they’ll be joined by another and that will be it. There will be no more Formula One teams other than these 12. Also, the ticket for going into a Formula One team, to set up a new team, just the ticket to get it, is $48 million, or something like that, and that’s before you even talk about anything else. So it was an opportunity for Spyker to make people more aware of their car – and of course it’s more than a car, it’s a brand, which we’re developing.
What’s MerchantBridge’s stake in Spyker?
We own between 5 percent and 10 percent. I’m on the supervisory board of the company, joined by a gentleman from Mubadala, the investment arm of the government of Abu Dhabi, which also has a stake.
Will MerchantBridge itself be trying to leverage publicity from its involvement?
Well, obviously, there is publicity, but we’re really going after the brand value. We feel the brand can be developed into something really big. Midland has already been rebranded as Spyker. It was Spyker Formula One, and now it’s Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One.
How does the ownership of the Formula One team break down?
The company is fully owned by Spyker. Etihad and Aldar are sponsors of the Formula One team. Normally, when you have a major sponsor, you rebrand the name on the racing circuit to their name.
From 2009, with Abu Dhabi joining the fray, the Middle East will have two races. Is there room for a third?
That’s a very hard question to answer. Formula One is widely watched and followed all over the world. I think from the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix in this part of the world people started to take more interest. If you were at the last Grand Prix there you would have seen that the numbers are increasing. People are taking more interest, not just in Bahrain, but in the whole region. Probably I feel, with 2009 coming up in Abu Dhabi, that’s an added value. In Europe, you’ve got so many venues, so there’s always room.
