Caterham-Crowd-Funded
Caterham F1 Clings Onto Crowd Funded Life Line
Formula One
Caterham F1 is something of a confusing story at the moment, the company went into administration on October 21st 2014. It looked like the end of the road for the plucky-go-lucky F1 outfit which debuted in 2012. The writing was on the wall as early as July of this year when Caterham F1 began making cost cutting measures by slashing 40 members of staff from its pay-roll. The incensed employees have since threatened legal action for unfair dismissal. F1’s Pharaoh, Bernie Ecclestone, could have handed out punitive fines to Caterham for missing races but decided to give the back-field runners special dispensation, despite Caterham breaching the sports regulations. Ecclestone left the door open for Caterham to make a return to compete in the final series of races but the team missed the Brazilian Grand Prix, while administrators on behalf of the company sought new investment at the event. Caterham’s administrators failed to drum up interest and so resorted to Crowd Funding, where the public can make donations via the internet. The crowd funding model seems to have literally paid off as the target of £2.3 million GBP has very nearly been reached thanks to 5,953 backers and counting. This means Caterham will be competing at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi this weekend. Bernie Ecclestone has publicly rolled his eyes in disbelief at the prospect of a crowd funded F1 team, the hater of democracy believes that proper and more stable financial foundations are the preferred route and Caterham’s long term future is still unclear. Bernie-Ecclestone-Democracy Moreover Formula One says that it needs to reach out to fans, and for once this crowd-funded investment has got the fans directly involved in a way never imagined before. And if you think about it, the fans already pump in vast amounts of their money into the sport, directly by going to the events, buying tickets, posters, accessories. And via the sports main sponsors, the fans and the general watching public ultimately buy whatever the sponsors are advertising on the side of an F1 car. Or during the TV ad breaks. So in a way F1 is already crowd-funded, but we all see it as marketing and sponsorship, deals created by experts in their fields not by Joe public. So crowd funding an F1 team is no different than say Williams F1 knocking on a door of a multi-billion pound blue chip company and begging for money, ultimately that money has already come from you and I. The question is how sustainable is a crowd-funded F1 team, using conventional wisdom it may well be, in the long term, that Bernie Ecclestone might be proved right, yet again.  Caterham-Crowd-Funded
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