Ecclestone Sad Over Digital F1 Failure

Bernie Ecclestone has confirmed his digital television dream has collapsed and admitted dismay at having to make half of the staff at his Biggin Hill studios redundant.

Despite an excellent feed from this year's races, the digital pay-per-view concept has failed to draw in the fans and Ecclestone was forced to end the transmission because of the massive costs involved.

The resulting job losses were unavoidable, and Ecclestone said: "It is not the sort of thing you like doing, especially this time of year, and I am sad and disappointed that it's been necessary.

"I should have done it sooner but I was trying to find a way of not having to take this action. The bottom line is that it couldn't be made to work, and that has cost us. It was a tough decision but we were having to charter two jumbo jets to carry the digital equipment to the fly-away races and put 350 people into hotel rooms. That doesn't come cheap."

It is a rare business defeat for Ecclestone, who has masterminded the growth of Formula One from a privateer sport to a multi-million dollar business involving some of the world's top car manufacturers.

But he admitted that, unlike Formula One as a whole, which has become a tremendously popular worldwide sport, his pay-per-view television product is not what the fans wanted.