The end of Formula 1?

[Scott]

Wait, what? I thought that BBC would be showing 50% of the RACES...as in they'll show 9 of 18 events but now I'm reading closer. You mean to tell me they are going to show only 50% of the race and then switch off?? ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING?????

Holy crap, what kind of gorilla marketing is that?

No, you were right the first time.

[Ian]

Makes me wanna puke, Jecklestones crowing about it in the paper this morning insiting it's great for the fans and the sport, plus you have Whitmarsh saying there won't be a premium for watching F1 on sky, no, maybe not, but you still have to subscribe to the sports package just to watch F1, what a twat.

[Scott]

Omigod...I just had a a peek at Sky's website.  If you have Sky available to you, the cost is 50GBP per month, not including initial hookup costs.  If you already have Sky, but need to upgrade to the 5 (only 5!) sports channels for an additional 40GBP per MONTH!! - and add another 10GBP just for ESPN. 

Good god you have to watch a lot of sports to warrant that.  That's robbery.  In Switzerland I can pay 35Sfr a month (about 25GBP) for 160 channels (most in HD) including every sports channel available in Switzerland (there are 6-7 I think).

[Alianora La Canta]

Possibly because the cheap satellite option is Freesat (once you have the dish and box installed, it's free unless you want a top-up channel). According to my channel listing, there are over 300 channels, covering most subjects and having several foreign languages (and several channels from abroad remade or dubbed into English). Sadly F1 won't be available on that system, except for the parts BBC shows.

[Scott]

Apparently the teams couldn't care a less about the fans either...

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93507

To reiterate, the BBC will NOT have access to the Sky only races to broadcast at a delayed time.  That's just what Martin Whitmarsh 'supposedly' understood.

[Ian]

I'll wait and see if Virgin can come up with a sensible price just for the F1 races, or a race by race price for the ones that Scabstone has hived off to sky (for a nice profit of course), if the price ain't right I don't think I'll bother watching any of it.

[Scott]

Exactly what I said.  Real fans will be so p*ssed that they can't watch the whole season, so they'll turn away completely. 

Honestly, I think this will boil for quite a while until the teams and sponsors realize what a disaster it will be to turn it all over to Sky.  A couple of million per team can't seriously be worth losing hundreds of thousands of fans, or maybe millions.

[Scott]

Maybe we should just run this discussion here instead of three different threads...

[Wizzo]

Many of my family, friends and work colleagues are paying an average of £100 per month for their complete Sky package. This is what I based my 6 GP visits on, £1200 a year is an awful lot of money.

I have thought about this long and hard and I still refuse to pay anything for F1 on principle alone. I also do not want to watch the F1 races on the BBC 4 hours after the race has finished and I know the results.

For the first time in 35 years I am questioning my loyalty to F1.

[Scott]

I am posting this link as much for the picture of Bernie as for the story...but the blog is actually right on the mark.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/jul/30/f1-bernie-ecclestone-tv-deal

[Scott]

One million GBP.  That's what each team is set to receive for this deal.  That's not really very much in F1 terms.  I wonder how much and how loud fan outrage it will take to get them to see that they stand to lose many millions more in sponsorship money once the viewing figures go down?

The fact that the teams are smiling and going on as if everything is peachy makes me think Bernie has sold this deal to them as just the tip of the iceberg, and that they should just imagine what kind of money they'll make when he starts doing the same thing with every other country's broadcasters.

Another story I read indicates that the whole deal was actually instigated by the BBC because they wouldn't have been able to pay for the rest of their broadcast contract without sub-contracting some of it out.  Seems poorly thought out if that's the case.  They could have at the very least offered up a standard def version on BBC and sell the HD version to cable.

Slightly related:

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/30072011/58/teams-say-tv-deal.html

[cosworth151]

I'm still not sure when the teams found out about this. Yesterday during second practice, the BBC guys said they didn't hear about it until they got to the track that morning. It will be interesting to see what shakes out once the race week-end is over. Everyone will have three weeks to sort out how they feel about it. Sadly, it sounds like it's a done deal, legally.

[Scott]

Whitmarsh was pretty quick with his brain farts trying to put a positive spin on it.  Very un-Mclaren like.  If I was Ron I'd chuck him over this, not over 2011's performance.    

[David]

OMG I was away for a couple of days in Germany and look what I've missed. This is awful news and a bloody disgrace. 

I have Sky but not Sky sports and I really don't want to have to pay another subscription on top of my TV licence and standard Sky. I watch darts on Sky sports at a mates house and it is dominated by ads which for me spoils viewing.

Another worry is that F1 will go the way of boxing and go pay per view. If it was £15-£20 per weekend to watch F1 coverage that would be the end of it for most. I fear because of the per race viewing figures that is the way it will go. RIP F1 

[Dare]

As long as streaming isn't effected it's no big deal,just
connect your pc to a bid screen tv.

I guess I've gotten used to watching F1 the hard way