F1 has been more lucrative than the FIFA World Cup in the past fifteen years.
That is the finding of F1 business journalist Christian Sylt, writing for Forbes.
He said the pinnacle of motor sport’s revenue has been $16.2 billion, compared to FIFA’s $14.5 billion in the same period since 1999, he said.
The latest financial news comes despite Bernie Ecclestone saying the success of football is one reason F1 has been struggling to attract new fans.
"Maybe other forms of entertainment, because of television, have taken away a big chunk of people, who would have watched F1 and are now watching something else," the 84-year-old F1 chief executive told the latest edition of F1 Racing magazine.
"These other things are now accessible; before, they weren’t. Football is big, big, big. Thousands of games. We have 20 ’games’ per year.
"And sponsors," Ecclestone continued. "They come to us if they want to position their product in F1. We can offer them 20 different variations of where they can go and how they can appear, but with football ... think of how many games they play on a weekend, in every country.
"The world has changed," he concluded.