Ecclestone was born in St Peter South Elmham, Suffolk, and raised in Bexleyheath, southeast London. He left school at 16 and worked at a local gasworks before establishing a motorcycle parts trading business after World War II, forming the Compton & Ecclestone dealership with Fred Compton. He began racing in the 500cc Formula 3 series in 1949, acquiring a Cooper Mk V in 1951 and competing mainly at Brands Hatch, where he achieved occasional wins before retiring from driving following accidents.
Ecclestone returned to motorsport as a team manager in 1957, managing driver Stuart Lewis-Evans and purchasing two chassis from the disbanded Connaught Formula One team. He entered these cars at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix and the 1958 British Grand Prix, though neither qualified or competed successfully. The death of Lewis-Evans following an accident at the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix prompted Ecclestone to withdraw from racing once more.
He later managed Jochen Rindt and became a partial owner of Rindt's 1970 Lotus Formula 2 team. Rindt was awarded the 1970 World Drivers' Championship posthumously after dying in a crash at Monza.
During the 1971 season, Ecclestone was approached by Ron Tauranac, the designer-owner of the Brabham team. Ecclestone purchased the team for approximately £100,000. Tauranac remained initially as designer but the two men clashed, and Tauranac departed early in 1972. Ecclestone then dismantled Brabham's profitable customer car production business, judging that a competitive Formula One programme required total focus on the works effort. He promoted the young South African designer Gordon Murray to chief designer for 1973, and Murray's Ford-powered BT42 and subsequent designs brought the team multiple victories in 1974 and 1975 with drivers Carlos Reutemann and Carlos Pace.
Ecclestone signed an engine deal with Alfa Romeo from 1976, a period of mixed results. The arrival of Nelson Piquet as the team's lead driver in 1979 coincided with a return to Cosworth power and an upturn in performance. Piquet narrowly lost the 1980 title to Alan Jones but won the championship in 1981 and again in 1983, the latter title coming with a BMW turbocharged engine in the BT52. Brabham's 1983 championship was the first turbo-powered Formula One world title. Murray left for McLaren after 1986 having designed cars that won 22 Grands Prix. Ecclestone ran the team through 1987, when it scored only eight points, before selling it to Swiss businessman Joachim Luhti in 1988 for over five million US dollars.
Parallel to his role at Brabham, Ecclestone co-founded the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974 alongside Frank Williams, Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Ken Tyrrell, and Max Mosley. He became FOCA chief executive in 1978, with Mosley as legal adviser. Together they negotiated television contracts for Grand Prix broadcasts, a move that placed commercial power with the teams rather than the FIA. The resulting Concorde Agreement in 1987 formalised Ecclestone's control over Formula One's administration, setup, and logistics. Through the Formula One Group, which he founded that year, Ecclestone controlled the distribution of prize money and television revenues to teams for the following three decades.
His sale of the Formula One Group to Liberty Media was completed in 2017, at which point Ecclestone was removed as chief executive. He was appointed chairman emeritus and adviser, a role that expired in January 2020.
Ecclestone was involved in a number of public controversies during his tenure. A 1997 political controversy arose over the Labour government's initial exemption of Formula One from a planned tobacco advertising ban, following a £1 million donation Ecclestone had made to the party. The donation was subsequently returned.
He was implicated in German bribery proceedings involving former BayernLB banker Gerhard Gribkowsky, eventually paying a £60 million settlement in 2014 to end the trial without admitting guilt. In October 2023, Ecclestone pleaded guilty to tax fraud at Southwark Crown Court, having failed to declare foreign assets of £400 million. He agreed to pay over £653 million in back taxes and penalties and was sentenced to 17 months in prison, suspended for two years.
Ecclestone's acquisition of Brabham in 1972 was the entry point for his transformation from team owner to the sport's dominant commercial administrator. Under his stewardship, Brabham won two Drivers' Championships and became a proving ground for Gordon Murray's design innovations. His broader legacy in Formula One — the negotiation of television rights, the global expansion of the race calendar, and the Concorde Agreement framework — shaped the commercial structure of the sport for four decades.