Ecclestone looking at 'more equal' revenue distribution

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Bernie Ecclestone is looking at changing the prize money is handed out in Formula One to give a more equal revenue distribution to all the teams.

According to a report in The Times, Ecclestone is willing to scrap the bonus payments which are made to the bigger teams in favour of a Premier League model of revenue distribution. At present, five teams - Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and Williams - all receive bonus payments from the Commercial Rights Holder.

Figures published in Autosport earlier this year showed teams will all receive a share of $965million in payments from Formula One Management (FOM), with Ferrari set to receive $192m thanks to an agreed bonus from Ecclestone of $105m regardless of its championship position. Mercedes ($74m), Red Bull ($74m), McLaren ($32m) and Williams ($10m) all also receive bonuses on top of their performance-based prize money.

With Sauber and Force India having lodged a complaint with the European Union over the unfair distribution of prize money last year, Ecclestone now says he wants to redistribute the funds more equally.

"I told Toto [Wolff] not to think about banking any money yet," Ecclestone told The Times. "I am going to have a good look at how things work to see if I can come up with something more equal for all the teams.

"The Premier League has a good way of distributing the prize money, so maybe that could work for us. There will be people who will like it and people who won't like it, and people who will suffer."

If the pot was distributed equally, each team would receive $96.5m from FOM this year as Haas does not have a commercial agreement with Ecclestone. At present, seven of the ten teams with commercial deals receive less than that amount.

The Premier League model Ecclestone cites sees clubs in the top league in English football receive an equal share of all oversees broadcast revenues and 50% of the UK broadcast revenues. 25% of the UK revenues are then distributed on a sliding scale as 'merit payments' based on a team's finishing position in the league, and the final 25% is paid out in 'facilities fees' each time a club is broadcast live in the UK.

For the 2015/16 season, the Premier League's model resulted in a ratio of 1.52:1 between the club finishing top and the club finishing bottom in the table.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.