Petrobras ups money to Williams

Petrobras has announced that it is increasing its sponsorship activities by 30% and plans to invest $16m in sports sponsorships, although this goes up to $21m when added to sponsorship which is coming from the Petrobras subsidiary Petrobras Distribuidora (BR). The company has cut back considerably on its activities in handball, surfing and Rio de Janeiro soccer team Flamengo and we believe that most of this money has gone into the Williams F1 deal which is estimated to be worth at least $10m. Being a state company Petrobras is bound to give details of its promotional budgets but it is not giving details of how much is being spent on each sport. However the local media says that Williams will get around half of the full budget. Grandprix.com [Editor's Note: There was a time when Champ Car would have been in the running for the Petrobras money. In fact, after Ayrton Senna died, CART was far more popular in Brazil than F1. CART was booming, TV ratings were high worldwide and the series was flush with money and sponsors. The Indy 500 TV ratings were significantly higher than NASCAR's Daytona 500. Then Tony George thought he had a better idea, created the IRL, split the sport in half, and killed an entire industry.]