 In 1995 , a deal was signed between Ecclestone and the FIA that passed all of the commercial rights to Formula One to him for 15 years , on the condition that they would return to the FIA at the end of that period . Ecclestone had been building up Formula One as a television package since the early 1990s , investing heavily in new digital television technology . For the duration of the deal , the FIA would receive an index @-@ linked annual fixed royalty , estimated by Lovell at around 15 % . Mosley said " My belief is that I got a better deal than anyone else could have because it was more difficult for Ecclestone to take a hard line with me as we had worked together for so long . " The following year the FIA also passed the rights to all its other directly sanctioned championships and events to Ecclestone , also for 15 years , An attempt to add a 10 @-@ year extension to the F1 contract in return for a share in Ecclestone 's proposed flotation of Formula One was later vetoed by the European Commission . Mosley 's agreement with Ecclestone on TV rights for F1 angered three of the team principals in particular : Ron Dennis ( McLaren ) , Frank Williams ( Williams ) and Ken Tyrrell ( Tyrrell ) , who felt that neither Ecclestone nor the FIA had the right to make such an agreement without the teams . They refused to sign the 1997 Concorde Agreement without increased financial returns and threatened to make a complaint under European Union competition rules . The European Commission was already investigating the FIA ’ s agreement with Ecclestone in what Lovell calls a " highly personal and bitter battle between Max Mosley and [ EU commissioner Karel ] van <unk> " . 
