To say Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds lives and breathes sport would be an understatement… if you asked his wife. “My wife once complained to me because I was screaming in bed at 3 o'clock,” he jokes. “I’d woken up to watch the dressage during the Olympics. So that'll give you a feel for it!”.
Dodds is the eccentric man at the helm of the world’s most progressive motorsport. Formula E cars don’t make much noise on track, but as a brand, they like to make noise off it. Last year, Dodds wagered £250,000 that Max Verstappen would win the F1 world title, owing to the sport’s predictability. He would eventually be proven right, but still honoured the bet, offering £125,000 to FE’s women in motorsport initiatives and the other half to a charity of Verstappen’s choice.
The headline-grabbing bet speaks to what Dodds knows best: creating a stir. For a number of years, Dodds was one of Richard Branson’s right-hand men at Virgin - a company who know a thing or two about opportunistic stunts. More of the same is on the cards, but Dodds knows for Formula E to grow, it not only needs its renowned excitement on the track and green-fingered technological wizardry in the garages, but also a narrative off it - and his fanatical love of sport is helping drive that.
"If you look at sports like darts - and to some degree boxing - this creation of heroes and villains and personality out of their sporting stars, I think they do amazingly well,” Dodds says. "The entertainment feels almost WWE-ish in terms of how they present those protagonists to the crowd.
