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?

There is much romanticism about Formula One of the past. Today it has to be more of a family sport, not less. It is a fixture in the Sunday afternoon TV programmes, and probably flamboyance - those white silk suits and devil-may-care attitudes - would be outworn attributes today.

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.

In an era of transparency, you can have innovation without branding, but you cannot have branding without innovation.

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.

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.

Formula One gives a platform to companies like Rolex - and that's just in media space, watching television or reading newspapers, digital or physical. You see the brand in the context of the competition and bring it to the attention of everybody on a regular basis.