Bernie Ecclestone Doesn’t Care about Young or Poor Audiences

Money continues to overshadow the spirit of F1

Bernie Ecclestone,

the chief executive of the Formula One Group, has recently expressed his views on the necessity of better exposure of the F1 sport on the realm of social media. According to him, the Formula One does not need to engage in social media marketing because it doesn’t need to attract younger audiences and fans any more than it already has. Although social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook could help attract new audiences, Ecclestone says he is not ‘interested in that nonsense’. Although the number of TV audiences are still quite impressive with around 350 million worldwide, F1 and Ecclestone both have been criticized heavily because of the of social media activity. One may wonder what the need of social media is when there is such a large audience per grand prix weekend. However, the fact that the number of audiences has dropped from 500 million may leave you surprised.

A number of factors may be at work behind the decreasing number of F1 audience. But the sport’s aging demographics and the various viewing platforms such as Smartphone and tablets are also partly responsible. Despite Formula One’s obvious need to be more active on social media, Ecclestone stated “I’m not interested in tweeting, Facebook and whatever this nonsense is. I tried to find out, but in any case I’m too old-fashioned. I couldn’t see any value in it”. Not only that, the 84 year old British business magnet also went on to express his views on today’s generation saying “And, I don’t know what the so-called young generation of today really wants. What is it? You ask a 15 or 16-year-old kid ‘What do you want?’ and they don’t know. The challenge is getting the audience in the first place.”

In his recent interview with the Campaign Asia-Pacific magazine, Ecclestone went on a rant about how Formula One doesn’t need to engage with its younger audience on social media because the best way to advertise the sport is to put it on TV. “Now, you’re telling me I need to find a channel to get this 15-year-old to watch Formula One because somebody wants to put out a new brand in front of them? They are not going to be interested in the slightest bit. Young kids will see the Rolex brand, but are they going to go and buy one? They can’t afford it. Or our other sponsor, UBS. These kids don’t care about banking. They haven’t got enough money to put in the bloody banks anyway. That’s what I think” – added Ecclestone.

According to the Chief Executive of Formula One Group, the sport would rather have an audience of 70 year old rich people who can benefit the industry with their financial prowess. The younger generation doesn’t have enough money to be beneficial for the sport anyway!

Source: All information provided in this article has been derived from http://blackflag.jalopnik.com/bernie-ecclestone-doesnt-care-about-you-if-youre-not-o-1658900682/+matthardigree