Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

~ INTERVIEW Part ij:Jos P. Vaessen ! T man who calls the bluffs he 0") ...... The FIM's outspoken president fears neith er Bernie Ecclestone nor the tobacco giants. In this con cluding part of our interview, President Vaessen tells the FIM's side of th e TV rights negotiations, shrugs off any threat of a new "World Series," and touches on other subjects. By Den n is Noyes Photos by H enny Ray Abrams s 28 o it 's time to ta l k about the televis io n side of this bus iness . Bernie Ecclestone said at one poin t in his recent interview somethi ng that is an uncomfortable truth. He said, " You kn ow and I know that once the race is u nderway the cameras only follow th e leaders and it doesn 't matter how many bikes are in the race." What would you say to that? You know a nd I know that Bern ie, who is still a friend of mine, says he is not interested in spe ctators, Bernie can have a TV show wit h only o ne car raci ng, Sen na by himself, bur we, the FIM, thi nk of the spectators , in the grandstands and of the sport. We want the gri ds full and the grandstands fu ll. Sure, 90-percent of the sponsor ship money is in those few r iders who are in the lead a nd Bernie is interested in , those sponsor s and he does a good job for them . His business is TV a nd sponsors. Bur I am the president of a Federation a nd m y responsibility is different. I th ink Bernie is doing a good job a t wha t he is paid to do , and Rob erts also , bur I must make su re that I care for the sport, The Dorna contract , is a co mme rcial contract But it is good for the sport a nd not just good for a few teams." Let 's talk about th e TV contract now. Is it true tha t you were never pleased wi th the Motomedia-I.S.C. con trac t? I was never p leased with 'the fact th~t the FIM gave Motomedia the po wer to deal the TV ri ghts. H ow cou ld th e FIM g ive 45-percent to IRTA and 45percent to Ropa and 10-percent for the FIM ? I never objec ted to the Ecclestone (I.S.c.) contract, I objected to Motornedia . I ha d to call in ROPA.and IRT A a nd red isti bu te the shares of these profits to 33-perce nt for the FIM and 33-percent for eac h of the others in Motomedia. Your impression is, then, that I,S.C. has done a good job? , A good job for wh om? I a m s}lre tha t Bernie has done a good job for hi s interests. T here were a million a nd a half dollars to be spl it up last year, a half million for each, th e FIM , ROPA and IRTA. But Bernie's real bu sin ess is Formula I. If he has sufficie n t time maybe he can make mor e money fro m bikes, bu t if he has less he makes less. It is no good having our TV ri gh ts in the hands of a man who al so has Formula I rights. Bernie has the Formula I races wi th the home broad" cas ters, bu t the mo tor cycle races are on cable . I cannot say that there ar e more people seeing th e races becau se I don't hav e reli able sta tistics from before the I.S.c. con trac t in o rder to co m pa re, but I think we may 'h ave more hours of TV time with the satell ite station covera ge, but maybe less viewers. I a m not sure we have increased th e TV audien ce with the I.S.C. con tra ct. I see Bernie selling bikes and cars as a package deal and I see that in yo ur in tervi ew he says that on a scale of 10 as measurement of professionalism he puts Formula I at 10 and bikes at 3 and this makes me a ngry beca use Bern ie does not put car s at 8 or 9, but at 10, perfectio n, a nd I see tha t he never wo uld want bike racing to be a ri val of Formula I. Finally I must clear so me thing up: the management coun ci l did not choose to accep t Bernie Eccleston e's bid for th e T V rights because they decided th at it wo uld be a co nflict of interests for Bern ie to hold both bike a nd F-I TV righ ts. That is how he wants it to be. Bal astre said in an in terview that I read that th e only rival he sees on th e horizon in th e future for Formula I is GP bike racing. Eccleston e knows this is true and that is wh y we cannot have the TV righ ts of bikes and Formula I cars in the hands of the sam e man, especially when the business of th is man is Formula I. If h is bid was not considered, why was he in vited to bid? H e was o ne of seven bidders a nd I visited h im and nego tia ted with him, but wh en the first bids were put there was objec tion fro m within th e Man agement Co u nci l to the FIM accep ting his bid a nd he kn ew this. The first objec tio ns were made in Sep tember wh en offers were already being considered but th e fin al decision to rejec t Bernie's offer was mad e before the Congress in Buda pest. T wo weeks after the Congress , I went to see Bernie, in London and to exp lai n all th is to him. H e knows all th is. He feels that he should h ave ha d the option to contin ue if he equalled the highest bid because he was the original contract holder. ' He cannot say he wants to co n tin ue his con tra ct with the FIM because he never had a contract with the FIM but wit h Mot omedia. The Management Council would not have given this co ntract to him because of the principle of th e th ing .. . because of the co nflic t of interests. The fact that Bernie go t th e co n tract was really IRTA's do ing, although ROPA were there at the end. I have taken the power to deal o ur TV rights back from Motomedia a nd this is the first time the FIM has di rectly done a maj or TV deal. I see in your intervi ew that Bernie says he is na ive a nd I have to sta n laughing. Bernie is never nai ve, he is. far too clever a nd he cer tai nly made a good deal fo r himself in h is dealing with Motomedia. Would you take issue with any of the other things that he said in the interview? Yes. H e says tha t he never wanted title sponso rsh ip when in fact he was the , first to bid for ti tle sponsor ship. It was because he wanted to bid for title sponsorship th at I had to get in touch with the other bidders during the final stages of the bidding and tell them ail that we were. now accepting bids for a contract that would include title sponsorship. It was because of Bernie's bid that I had to write all the candidates to tell them in August that we were now bidding on a five-year con tract with title sponsorship. Bernie wanted four title sponsors . . . one for each class, but I changed that to one overall ti tle sponsor. Bernie also said that he also doubted that sealed bids were solicited and that it seemed to him that some bidders knew wh at other bidders were bidding. This is ab sol utely untrue. There were sealed bids a nd they are all still in the FIM safe. T he on ly man who knew all bid s was me. Some bidders told their bids to their own Federation s. Som e companies a pproached the FIM via J o Zegwaard, so he knew some bids. But nobody knew all th e bids. In the Managem ent Co uncil I opened the largest bid and it was from Dorna and everyone was satisfied with the bid and th e bidder so we did not open the other bids. In the General Assem bly, the Secretary G eneral of the Italian Federation claimed that there had been a larger bid than $30 million. . T hat bid came from the Ita lian com pany, from Flammini, but it came too late because I had already announced before the Managem ent Countil that Dorna had bid $30 million and that now I wou ld negotiate to clo se the deal o nly with Dorn a. At nin e o'clock on the Sunday before the mee ting of the Manageme nt Council, I put all the docu me nts in the safe, sealed and signed, and at 9:17 a fax came in offeri ng $32 million, $12 m ill ion more tha n the previous offer. All candida tes knew tha t th e bidding had closed. But anyway we are not obliged to accep t the hi ghest bid. I wo ul d not ha ve accepted the Ita lia n bid even if it ha d come earlier becau se I ca n see he is bl u ff i n g . . . h e is gam bling. The Ita lians started with $6 million, then $10 mill ion , $15 million and then $20 million, and then th e day after the decision had bee n made and a nnounced in the Management Council for $30 millio n, they sent a fax offering $32 m ill io n. This is not the way a businessman bids. It is the way a gambler bids. Now take Dorna, they bid once, $30 million . ... take it or leave it. Dorna is backed by Banesto, a very large bank. Dorn a is a famous and important company, and we know that Dorna is strong, so strong that it could afford to lose the money. Doma is not a one-day company. They hav a 35-year TV contract with the Real Madrid soccer team and an eight-year contract with the Barcelona soccer team. They say, maybe we will lose initially, but they are serious about this a nd are maki ng a long-term investment I recall that at the General Assembly, . Sr. Maazzi, th e Genera l Secretary of the Ital ian Federation, asked tha t the bidding be kept open for an additional 24 hours and stated that he knew for a fact tha t a bid higher than Dorna's had been " made. Your reaction to that was to call for what was in fact a vote of confidence. This seemed a drastic measure. We co uld not 'make fool s of ourselves after having alrea dy closed the period of bidding by opening the bidding again. This would not have been fair

• Cover