How much did Bernie Ecclestone earn with Formula 1? Life and success of 'the Napoleon of motorsport'

Standing at just 5 feet 2 inches tall, he was the sovereign of Formula 1. Let’s admit it; the comparison with an emperor worked well and was certainly to Bernie Ecclestone’s liking. After all, the Englishman has never hidden his belief “in dictatorship rather than democracy” and his willingness “to take a bullet for Putin.” But that’s another story.

In reality, Ecclestone has always done quite a lot to make headlines. At the age of 92, he made headlines once again, admitting to the evasion of nearly 400 million pounds from British taxes. This admission was followed by a 17-month prison sentence with a 2-year suspended sentence.

But who is the man who transformed Formula 1 from a niche sport into a billion-viewer spectacle?

The Origins: The Accident and Premature Farewell to Racing
Bernie Ecclestone was born in 1930 in Suffolk, East England. The son of a fishing boat captain, he left school at the age of 16 to work as an assistant in a chemical laboratory. After the war, he attempted to become a car and motorcycle racer, financing his efforts through the buying and selling of spare parts.

It was precisely this activity that made Ecclestone rich. His racing career was cut short by an accident at the Brands Hatch circuit, but the spare parts business evolved into Compton & Ecclestone, one of the leading used car dealerships in the UK.

The Return: The Only Posthumous World Champion
Ecclestone returned to the world of racing in the late 1950s. He became the manager of some drivers, purchased the Connaught racing team, and attempted to qualify for the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix. However, in the same year, he abandoned racing for the second time when one of his drivers, Stuart Lewis-Evans, died in an accident at the Moroccan Grand Prix.

It was another temporary farewell. In the 1960s, Ecclestone became the manager of Austrian driver Jochen Rindt. However, his third sporting adventure ended similarly to the second. On September 5, 1970, at Monza, Rindt lost control of his Brabham during the qualifying session of the fourth-last race of the season. He crashed into the guardrail at the Parabolica corner and died while being transported to the hospital. The points accumulated up to that point were enough to make him the first and only posthumous world champion in the history of Formula 1. Ecclestone left racing once again.

The Era of Bernie Ecclestone
The third farewell was the shortest; just two years later, Ecclestone bought the Brabham team. He led it until 1987 and guided it to two driver’s world championships with Nelson Piquet.

Together with the owners and managers of other English teams, such as Frank Williams of Williams, Colin Chapman of Lotus, Teddy Mayer of McLaren, Max Mosley of March, and Ken Tyrrell of Tyrrell, Ecclestone founded the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974. For years, this organization opposed the International Automobile Federation (FIA), the organizer of the Formula 1 World Championship. This standoff continued until the so-called Concorde Agreement, which granted FOCA control over television rights. In 1987, Ecclestone was appointed Vice President of the FIA with responsibility for promotional affairs.

The New Formula 1

In this role, Bernie Ecclestone began to transform Formula 1: from an organization managed almost amateurishly into today’s multinational enterprise. In the 1990s, he became the highest-paid executive in the world. In 1998, his salary was £54 million.

During the same period, his name entered British politics. In 1997, on the eve of the elections that would bring Tony Blair to power, Bernie Ecclestone donated one million pounds to the Labour Party. Not coincidentally. Obviously. The first progressive government after 18 years of Margaret Thatcher and John Major had plans for a law against cigarette advertising. At the time, many teams were sponsored by major tobacco companies: Ferrari by Marlboro, Williams by Rothmans, McLaren by West. The new law spared Formula 1. The scandal only subsided when Blair returned the donation.

The End of the Empire
Today, Bernie Ecclestone has an estimated net worth of three billion dollars, making him the 22nd richest person in the UK according to the Forbes Billionaires 2022 ranking. He considered buying Arsenal in the past before turning to Queens Park Rangers, which he purchased in 2007 for 90 million euros alongside Flavio Briatore and sold in 2011.

However, he is no longer the king of Formula 1.

As early as 2005, he sold his shares in the Formula One Group to CVC Capital Partners, a British private equity fund. In the course of this deal, as he admitted in 2013, Ecclestone paid a bribe of $44 million to a German banker. He ultimately agreed to pay another $100 million to have the case closed.

Bernie Ecclestone remained as the CEO until 2017 when CVC sold the sport to Liberty Media, owned by American billionaire John Malone. Recently, the former emperor commented that the new owners are producing “an American-style F1.” It was not a compliment. Already 14 years ago, Bernie Ecclestone summarized his opinion of Americans like this: “They probably think Bosnia is a neighborhood in Miami.”