JamesB wrote:Canice, don't get fooled about Ferrari: they still have the Philip Morrus deal if I am not wrong.... tons of bucks there.
Jaime, what you don't know about the Philip Morris deal is this. It is a unique sponsorship that work like this:
Philip Morris of the famous Marlin-Boron brand as well as Kraft foods and so on, has arranged a $100 USD Million sponsorship per year with Ferrari as the title sponsor since 1996. Whereby Philip Morris will 'then' using the 'entire car' to arrange other sponsorship to renting out wherever the spaces necessary for other companies to recoup the difference.
So it is not 'exactly' a losing equations depends on the number of suitors willing to with Phillip Morris' marketing team on behalf of Ferrari. But for Ferrari, that just means a constant amount available for their budget. Then again, with a large team, I am not sure that they don't use shareholders' money from FIAT to partially funding the team.
This is something that shareholders are really sensitive about this. Remember, when Mercedes purchased Brawn. Haug and Dr. Zetsche were on the chopping block before the company agreed to sell two thirds of the Formula 1 team's assets to two individual investors by the name of Toto Wolff (former Race Car Driver and a shareholder of the Williams F1 team), and former 3 times World Champion (also a former Ferrari Advisor) by the name of Niki Lauda.
The rest, as they say, is history.