What is it about major
sporting events subsidized by Governments that compel event boosters to feed us the most spurious claims when it
comes to who’ll be watching via an international TV audience? And Governments willingly
swallow such “BS” because they’re in on the con themselves!

So when the latest
international motor sport out to race with other people’s money – the
A1 Grand
Prix of Nations series – comes to Eastern Creek International Raceway
(November 4-6), it has persuaded the NSW Government to pledge $1 million
to upgrade the
track to FIA Grade 2 specification as required. But what other money
has the Government also handed over to help get
this race off the ground so it can bask in the glow of the promised
manifest
economic benefits to befall the state – given it’s been sold the race’s
huge
international status?

One-time World Formula
One Champion Alan Jones, as chairman of the Australian A1 team competing in this
new poor man’s out of season F1, couldn’t help himself when congratulating the
Government on its commitment, saying he had “absolutely no doubt this will
become Sydney’s biggest annual international sporting event,
delivering huge economic benefit to the city and the state.”

But just in case anyone
still feels the race might not be all it’s cracked up to be – Jones obligingly
went the extra mile: “Images from the
A1 Grand Prix of Nations at Eastern Creek will be beamed to a potential
worldwide audience of over 4 billion people.”

Well Alan, not even the
Olympics is watched by that many – and that’s when all the major global
TV networks combine. I’m fed up to the back teeth with people trying
to legitimize their particular sporting event, by
saying something as enormously stupid and erroneous as “a potential
worldwide
audience of over 4 billion people.”

No doubt this will
come as a shock to Jones – but Formula One estimates its global TV audience at all
of 300 million. Which makes rather a
mockery of what many other sporting events claim to be their own numbers – but
surely Jones and A1 have set a new gold standard in BS.