Mosley defends F1 sale

By BBC Sport Online's Andrew Benson in Monaco

Motorsport boss Max Mosley has denied that he has sold the commercial rights of Formula One at too low a price.

The sport's governing body, the FIA, concluded an agreement in April to lease the rights to Bernie Ecclestone's Slec organisation for 100 years from 1 January 2011.

Slec already has the rights until that date.

The cost negotiated by Ecclestone with the FIA was $313.6m (about £219m).

Nobody really knows who has what rights to what part of the championship

  Max Mosley

That compares with the £1.1bn that Sky paid for the rights to English Premiership football. ITV paid £120m for three years of highlights.

But Mosley defended the deal on the grounds that the FIA has been paid the money up front and can earn interest off it for 11 years even before the deal starts.

That, he says, means that in real terms the deal "runs into billions".

He said: "Firstly, one has to be very careful about the value of rights, and the fate of ISL, the company that went bust having paid too much for sporting rights and can't get the money back. It's one thing to talk about these sums and it's another to actually get them.

"The other thing is that $300m today equates to $500m when the rights actually start, which is 1 January 2011.

How much of the rights belong to the teams?

  Max Mosley

"If you work out on a discounted basis what that is worth each year, it is really a substantial amount.

"And usually, when you read about these billions [for sport's rights' deals], it's for several years and they add together the whole lot.

"Looked at from that point of view it is actually a huge amount of money."

Mosley added that he felt he could not have secured any more money from the deal because of doubts about who actually owns the F1 world championship.

"Nobody really knows who has what rights to what part of the championship," he said.

"How much of the rights belong to the teams? How much belong to Bernie and his companies because he built it up? How much belong to the FIA because they were the original proprietors.

The future of F1 is still uncertain

"If you had a big argument about it, you might find you don¿t own as much as you think you own. It's the 'bird in the hand' principle.

"And having that money now means we can put it to work immediately on safety issues to help people on the roads as well as in motorsport. If you take all those factors into account, we are very satisfied."

Mosley did not mention another important point. The future of F1 is uncertain after 2007 because that is when the agreement that binds the teams to the FIA championship runs out.

The motor manufacturers have threatened to set up a rival championship because they are concerned about F1 being transmitted only on pay TV in the future.