Martin Sorrell Quotes

When you go back to the above names it was a very much narrower situation - the alternatives were far fewer. Today there is much more competition for the 'hero stakes'! And if you think about all the alternatives you have today to spend your time on, the pool of heroes is much broader. It was very much less back then.

You could think about Vietnam and at some point in time about Nigeria. And then you head to South America: Argentina, Columbia, Peru. Probably not all of them will have an F1 race, but they are definitely considering events.

If you run a country and want to put it on the global map you don't have so many choices. You can get the Olympics, the World Cup or a Formula One race. And the first two are only every four years - and you have them only once.

Somebody who is unique - and this will get me into trouble - by definition cannot be replaced.

I remember that Jackie [Stewart] was the first driver wearing flameproof underwear! What it definitely was: it was much more flamboyant. But that doesn't really make it better in my point of view.

You have to see it on a broader level. But you also have to activate it properly.

The world is changing. And a lot of people in Formula One are starting to understand this.

That might be the old model: to get a fixed fee. You have to start to think about other models and how they can generate interest - what it can do for a brand in the future - and about the fact that revenue can also be generated in many other ways... Just look at the one and a half million people at the free Rolling Stones concert in Cuba. And Cuba is not Central Park! So just use your imagination as to what kind of revenue can be made.

In our business, except in media buying, there are few economies of scale. Client perception of creative agencies is that the bigger they are, the worse they are.

In that - and that is my personal view - Singapore delivers the most value, as they think about Formula One as a complete entertainment event, on and off track.

If you ask what keeps me up at night, it's the pressure in the system forcing us to do all sorts of things. Content, data and technology are forcing us to think about business in a very different way.

If you pay 50 million for something, you probably pay another 50 to 100 million to activate it. And the more you spend, the better you do. There is no point in just buying rights.

Why not look at Indonesia? It will be the third biggest country in the world in population in 25 years' time - after India and China.

[Formula One] is entertainment and it competes with other entertainments - and not with other racing formats. It competes with people's time on a weekend. So you have to deliver.

F1 is a fight for people's time. There are millions of options today for how to spend it. That is probably the biggest difference from 1968 to now.

It is always easy to criticize, as Bernie Ecclestone is somebody with extreme opinions.

The arguments of waste are heavily overdone, because what you do is to accelerate the infrastructure that you have to build anyway, like airports and roads, and in this case it happens much faster. So speaking of a roadmap, without being specific, I would still go for Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East - that's what our clients are really interested in.

The web attacks traditional ways of doing things and elites, and this is very uncomfortable for traditional businesses to deal with.

Marketing is an investment, not a cost.

Monaco was my first race of the season and I spoke with a number of people and all seemed to be very optimistic.

In fact, if you were interested in a global platform there are only three sporting events: probably the most powerful - or equally powerful [to F1] - are the World Cup and the Olympics, and then Formula One. And there it gets interesting.

Despite streaming, despite the rise of tablets and smartphones - all the implications which in theory would make linear TV less important - live sporting events are extremely powerful. But it's not the event alone - it's also what's surrounding it.

Just take the lack of presence of F1 in the United States. In theory - and logically - you would have an East Coast Grand Prix, a West Coast Grand Prix, and I think you should have a street race in Detroit - it is still the motor capital of the US. You stay in the US for four weeks and could have two to three races, certainly two.

F1 is exciting, its values are attractive and it could be an even better family sport.

Technology will have moved on to an unimaginable level in ten years.

I was carrying Jackie Stewart's bag! Formula One was pretty much the same back then.

One of the reasons why they are optimistic is that there is more competition. Red Bull has become more competitive, the races have become more attractive - and that is what fans want!

You must not only focus on the consumer, but also on what it does to you internally - getting people aligned to the strategic mission of the company - what it does to the suppliers, governments, all your stakeholders.

The challenges some European economies have are such that it makes it very difficult for them. You have to go where the growth is.

The fast growing markets - the BRICS and Next Eleven - are the key. The next billion consumers are not going to come from the US or Western Europe - they are coming from Asia, Latin America and Africa. Formula One follows our strategy: fast growing markets, data, and digital. All those three things Formula One has. And it involves a stunning array of companies. Now that doesn't mean there can't be more.

Formula One does very well. It is a very interesting asset. Could it be run in a different way? Sure it could be. Could it be improved? I'm sure it could. But all I can say is, it seems to do pretty well.

Virtual Reality for Formula One could be fantastic - driving the car!

If I were to be super critical, I would say Formula One is too tactical and not strategic enough. And that brings us back to the digital issue: you may have to invest in order to gain - sacrifice some short-term effects in order to make high returns in the future.

In the 19th century China dominated the manufacture of porcelain. Then European factories discovered a cheaper method of making pottery of equal quality, demolishing the Chinese industry the exact reverse of what is happening now. World economics have turned full circle.

I'm in a business where there's complete anarchy. You can't control it - you can only react to it. The control that people traditionally had over their message is gone. Look at Wikileaks: you have to approach everything you write on the basis it's going to be on the front page of the newspaper.

I recently interviewed Bernie Ecclestone in London. He had a go at women, said [Vladimir] Putin should be running Europe and so on. He enjoys it - he's been doing it for such a long time. He has an entrenched position. The truth be known, he is unique, right?

When I think back to 2005, the fast growth markets - what we call the fast growth markets - were probably ten percent of our business. They are now 31 percent.

It doesn't make much sense and it's nil premium. They're going to have co-CEOs...which is a very uncomfortable structure.

If you are a driver of a team and have a certain set of sponsors, who is the target market for those sponsors? But, of course, it is also a question of nationality.

Formula One is not just multinationals. It's also about national players wanting to get global coverage.

The last person in the UK who described his product as being crap in public was one Gerald Ratner - and he was gone immediately.

If you look at the rights situation - what media companies pay - then you see that the rights prices continue to rise for powerful sports. Now what does that tell you? It tells you that the demand amongst global and local sponsors for these kinds of sports is immense, even if there is controversy attached to them like FIFA - who would definitely be number one on that list, though F1 has also been somewhat controversial.

I interviewed Kim Kardashian recently and had a conversation with her mother. A lot of people have various thoughts about Kim Kardashian, her mother and her sisters, but it is an incredibly well thought through concept and branding. Each of the daughters appeals to a different segment of the market.

The technology is already incredible and will improve massively in the next few years. Think about what you could do.

In the Ridley Scott film 'The Martian' you can do that [virtually driving car]. I have lifted off in the space craft from the surface of Mars, walked in space and looked down into deep space and got terrified, with the headphones and the goggles.

That is again a romantic notion: the hero. I think people enjoy a much more levelled playing field where you have the ability for many people to become heroes.

What you want to see [in Formula One] is a highly competitive sport - and the more equal it is the more exciting it is... the more volatile in the sense of results. If you have just one winner continuously it dulls the enthusiasm.

If you look at the sponsorship yields, Formula One - because it happens every year - generates more sponsorship money for a four-year cycle than anybody else. So it is very powerful.