Arrivabene wants to appeal to Playstation generation

Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene has reiterated his belief that the 'equalisation' of Formula 1 cars would not be good for the sport, and reckons that those in charge need to try and appeal to the 'Playstation' generation, with him considering video games a competitor to F1.

The owners of F1, Liberty Media, and the FIA have been attempting to reach out to a younger audience in more recent seasons by embracing online digital media and eSports, and it is the latter which Arrivabene believes should be targetted more as he reckons video games are now more important to younger people.

“Our competitor today, in my opinion, it’s my personal opinion, they are the Playstations,” he told Motorsport Week.

“If you look at Gran Turismo, most probably we need to switch our minds and focus our attention on our competitors.

“Today we have a broad offer of entertainment and we need to look at everything, not only certain sports and try to equalise everything. Is PlayStation a competitor? In my opinion yes. What do you have to do to beat the PlayStation? You have to do something that is more interesting, most probably.

“It’s not a detailed answer to the question but we need to direct our attention to the entertainment industry and today what they offer is bigger than many many years ago.

“And then you need to ask why other sports - and let me underline football – they are still big numbers - even if they sometimes face crisis - versus us.”

In 2020, regulations are set to be implemented which would standardise engine parts in order to allegedly level the playing field in the sport, and with Ferrari having been a major opponent to the idea from day one, Arrivabene has again suggested it wouldn't make F1 better or more entertaining.

“I think from the financial point of view, of course reducing the cost is always more than welcome,” the Ferrari boss suggested.

“It’s not related to the what, it’s related to the how. If reducing costs means equalisation it’s not for us.

“Standardisation is one thing, equalisation is another so equalisation is not in the DNA of car manufacturers. The problem is a bit more than the simple question related to the budget cap, that as I said, is very important. The question is related to the overall F1.

“What we want to do, to increase the interest in the sport, we need to analyse the mistakes of the past, to look forward for solutions in the future and this is also very important and to be honest, with ourselves: how is the level of interest to Formula 1 versus yesterday?

“What do we need to do? It’s not the budget cap, it’s one of the solutions but it’s the solution. We need to go back and to re-launch the sport.

“If at a certain point you have an audience that is becoming older, older, older and you work to retain what you have… and your attention is less focused on acquiring the young generation, this means that you have a problem.

“We never focused our attention on the audience and the audience, little by little, became older. This is the exercise that we need to look at.”

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