19/01/2011
NEWS STORY
Force India owner Vijay Mallya has confirmed his commitment to the team and F1, insisting that he does not see his involvement in the sport as a hobby.
In addition to his interest in the Force India team, which he bought in late 2007, multi-billionaire Mallya has bought into a number of other sports not least Cricket, being the owner of Royal Challengers Bangalore which plays in the Indian Premier League.
It is certainly not a hobby," he told the BBC's business reporter, Bill Wilson, ""F1 and cricket are part and parcel of our business tools for promotion, and are sports in which, not only I am interested, but in which India is hugely interested. "You can't say that (sport team ownership) takes the focus away from the businesses that produce the cash."
Mallya, whose empire includes the Kingfisher airline and the United Breweries Group, said of cricket - though it is hoped F1 will have the same effect in his country: "In India cricket is almost like a religion. You then have the young demographic, new consumers coming into my industry, who are going to turn 21, coming of legal drinking age.
"The same people are going to watch cricket, are going to enter the consumer sector of India, and advertisers are going to look at that ever-increasing consumer sector. They are going to spend more on TV revenues, and a large part (80%) of Indian TV revenues probably goes into cricket. So this is no bubble, this is very sustainable."
Referring directly to F1, he continued: "F1 is perhaps the most technically competitive sport in the world. You are no longer fighting for half a second, you are fighting for one-hundredth of a second. It has become a lot more competitive so it is very difficult to move up the ladder quickly.
"I am proud that the Force India F1 team. From the end of 2007, when I bought the team, to today it has come a long way.
"I'd love to be on the podium in the inaugural Indian Grand Prix," he admitted.
Asked about his team's line-up for this season, he said that an announcement will be made "in the next few days", his follow up that "there are some legal loose ends to be tied up", suggesting that the team is trying to find a way to put Scot Paul di Resta alongside Adrian Sutil even though Tonio Liuzzi has a contract for the season.