Do you know if you lost out to another country? Another bid?
GEORGE: No, I think, again, it’s a business decision for us, for Formula One. They have a lot of opportunities to consider, and I think they feel like they’ve made the fair assessment of this situation and the opportunities. If we’re not on the schedule, there will probably be 18 races and they can go up to 20 races, so it’s not like the music stopped and we didn’t have a seat. We’ll see, we’ll continue to have a dialogue, but it’s not fair to us, it’s not fair to our customers, the loyal core of Formula One fans, to just go on indefinitely on hold while we try to decide if we’re going to have a ticket renewal process, or what, for next year. So we just need to pull back and re-evaluate this situation and see where it goes from here.
(Inaudible)
GEORGE: That’s hard for me to say because what we’ve seen here the last few years is the core of Formula One fans. I think you could throw a lot at them, and they’re a resilient lot. The challenge is building on that. We started in 2000 with a very successful inaugural event. The second year we were faced with our first challenge, which was run the race two weeks after 9/11. Since then we have been faced with a number of hurdles, which have contributed to our inability to get the kind of traction we had hoped. We thought it would level off after about three years and then start to build, but in that time we had date changes, controversy about a contrived finish with Ferrari, we had the Michelin situation, we had indecision about the date – another date change – and I don’t think it has affected the core. One of the challenges of creating new fans is creating more awareness of Formula One with a consistent, national broadcast exposure is important. I think Speed has always done a great job, and we’ve had network coverage from year to year. But when you consider Formula One on the whole as a world championship, then you want consistent coverage just like any sport wants. Some of those things – having a title sponsor for a while with SAP and losing that – was a factor. And I think it’s important in the future that if we have it, it comes back with a committed title sponsor as part of that.
Some of the things you mentioned in combination with Bernie’s ambivalence about being in the United States, how much of that did wear on your patience, to get something done?
GEORGE: It didn’t really wear on my patience. It’s not for me to say whether (for) Formula One having a U.S. round of the World Championship is important to the success of Formula One, but certainly it’s a huge market for many of the manufacturers and sponsors involved, many of which would like to see a round in the United States. But I’m not sure it’s the “be all, end all,” so I think a lot of them (sponsors) are using Formula One as a platform for their desire to build their European markets and Asian markets. The United States is a factor, but it’s not the only thing to consider.
