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F1 2012 coverage leaves advertisers in a spin?
Posted by: ianh on Monday 01st August 2011
The BBC, currently in its final two years of a five year exclusive contract has been forced to negotiate its coverage of Formula One in an attempt to save £25m from its sports-rights annual spend. The original BBC £250m deal only began in 2009. It will now share it’s coverage with Sky Sports for the 2012 – 2018 season.
Sky will no doubt be delighted acquiring the rights to Formula One, it has been widely reported that as early as 1998 they have been after a share of the spoils.
How will the coverage work?
All the practice, qualifying and live races will be shown through Sky Sports through their TV, Online, Mobile and Tablet services.Half of the races and qualifying stages will stay in BBC, Online and Mobile networks including the British Grand Prix. Multi-platform coverage will be provided through skysports.com and bbc.co.uk/sport and the famous red button. BBC Radio 5 live will still air every race.
The BBC will broadcast highlights of all races and qualifying sessions that it won’t be showing live and news for all races will be broadcast through BBC News, Sky Sports News and Sky News.
What does this mean for advertisers?
Sponsors, advertisers and marketers will be watching this tie up very closely and with many questions, especially as 90% of the teams are based in Britain. Concerns have been voiced by some of Formula One’s major players including the tyre manufacturer Pirelli, racing teams Williams and McLaren not to mention the BBC live coverage team.The BBC has been reportedly enjoying 10 million viewers regular for its Formula One race days. This British Grand Prix at Silverstone reached 6.6m viewers on 10 July. In 2001 this was watched by 3.6m through ITV coverage. However, Sky Sports only has 5m subscribers.
What does this mean for fans?
Very few fans see this deal as a good thing for the sport. They have enjoyed some of the best ever coverage of F1 that has ever been broadcast via the BBC over the past 2 years. In 2011 the BBC got the presenters and commentators just right, who really connected with the audience and conveyed the sport with an exciting show featuring lots of depth.License payers are questioning why they should have to pay more money for something that the BBC has already committed too, and rightfully so.
The sponsors or Sky. Who’s driving?
Sky has already announced that they won’t make the same mistakes as ITV and show advertisements during the races, but this still leaves a bad taste for the F1 fans who have enjoyed F1 for free.Whilst there is no doubt that Sky has improved the coverage of every sport it has been involved with, the viewing figures could significantly be hit by moving races to Sky.
Which is more important, more viewers or more cash for the sport? We know what advertisers will want and it isn’t funding the search for new subscribers.
Image courtesy of Gregory Moine under the Flickr Creative Commons license
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Posted on August 3, 2011 by margaret brown
This is so disappointing we are all massive f1 fans how dare the bbc fill our screens with rubbish fund non entity channels yet disenfranchise 6.6 million. T V licence payers its not free we pay. I will not be giving sky any money for a sports channel that we as a family are not interested in. This is a very very bad decision Bernie needs to go.
Posted on August 5, 2011 by ianh
Hi Margaret, It is dissapointing for all involved, especially with timing half way in to the current contract.
One thing we can’t understand is that if you take the children’s programme ‘In the Night Garden’ which costs around £11m a year for BBC to make, then £25m is nothing to have kept the contract and the viewers.
Wonder also if the BBC team will make the jump over. If they do, would the fans? Martin Brundle’s contract is up at the end of the season.
Posted on August 6, 2011 by Lizzy
They had managed to get a new generation of fans including my 6 year old son who lives and breathes the sport hes 6 and does not understand why he can’t watch it. His dreams of becoming an f1 driver has been shattered, I understand that they obviously do not care about how hurt all the fans are I have followed the sport for many years and I’m extremely hurt by the choices being made, there had to have been something else that could have been done. I’m afraid after this season I will not be watching i will not pay for sky, in these times putting food on the table is more important. I hope they realise their mistakes before it is to late or I fear we will loose the sport for good. We have lost our sport to greed. This is a sad time for all f1 fans.
Posted on August 6, 2011 by Gary W
I have read that if i subscribe to sky sports just for the F1 coverage it will cost me £61 per race. i’m afraid i can find a lot better things to spend money like that on.
This will be bad for viewing figure, teams will get an extra £million for TV rights but sponsorship will suffer!! no sponsor is going to put the same amount of money in the pot for less advertising are they?
Posted on August 6, 2011 by Sir JGP
The move to Sky is real bad news for F1, the viewing figures are sure to drop and sponsors will leave the team or at best offer them less money, this will result in teams hitting harder times and finding it real difficult to raise the money required. I feel by the time FOM realise the mistake they have made we will have lost many of the teams in F1 now to bankrupty.
Please support http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fepetitions.direct.gov.uk%2Fpetitions%2F57&h=kAQAGUfp4AQC3Mhi65YHCBz4JFYpCqtI0pRLvAw_2hIy2ZA
Posted on August 6, 2011 by ShaGGy
It is also suspicious that the BBC brought SKY in on the deal without putting the contract up for tender or inviting any other FTA channel to join/bid with them.
Considering the contract was due to expire at the end of the 2012 season and the BBC were aware that Channel 4 were looking to take over the right for the 2013 season it comes as no suprise that the BBC approached SKY and made this deal until 2018 which locks out any other FTA operator from getting the rights for 7 more years as the BBC knew they were about to lose it they made this deal.
The OFT should be looking into this and then forwarding it on to the Competitions Commission for investigation as I am sure it breaks anti-competition laws.
Posted on August 12, 2011 by gazfarr
The BBC have over committed on the Olympics coverage it “rightly” needs to cover in 2012.
Whilst it is in no doubt that the Olympics will be the biggest sporting event to grace these shores since ’66, i think the media has totally over estimated how much the British public actually care about the games.
Back in 84 and 88 the Olympics were a big draw, party due to the inefficiencies that were dominating the British football scene. Since then however, sport and the way we watch it has developed into something much more powerful than an event that is still regarded as amateur and occurs once every 4 years – Simply put the Olympics does not have the attraction of high calibre names such as Rooney, Nadal, Woods…or Hamilton.
Formula 1 is in a much healthier state than it was a decade ago. The racing is competitive and although there is still a Big 3 style domination, it’s evident that membership to this elusive club is no longer divine. Therefore casual viewers have flocked back in their masses to watch not only the races, but the high quality output delivered by the Beeb.
Since moving back to the BBC, the coverage has been second to none. At times it has almost been too good to be true. Whilst clearly unsustainable forever, the BBC have judged that the current level of production to be too costly.
Again as true as this may be, the BBC have not considered what is truly essential to their F1 viewers; and that is the Sunday afternoon race session.
I truly adore the free practice and qualifying coverage, the wealth of information available online and via the red button, not to mention the high grade front-end and insight provided by Jake and the team from the pit lane
But I’d happily sacrifice all of the superfluous viewing for just the race on a Sunday afternoon, covered from a studio in Salford. The alternative of paying a subscription for 10 races is simply not a pill I wish to swallow and the BBC have wrongly determined that I would rather watch archery for a 2 week period, compared to Fernando and the Scuderia wrap up a title.
Posted on August 14, 2011 by dik
It is probable that the 2011 BBC F1 coverage and presentation cannot be bettered.
If its not broken don’t try and fix it.
Posted on August 14, 2011 by ianh
Some really interesting points raised here all, I think we’re all in agreement that this is a bad thing for the sport. Lets get behind the petition sent from Sir JGP http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fepetitions.direct.gov.uk%2Fpetitions%2F57&h=kAQAGUfp4AQC3Mhi65YHCBz4JFYpCqtI0pRLvAw_2hIy2ZA
Posted on November 27, 2011 by Mark
greed greed and more greed from Ecclestone, and its way past time that the British realized that the Murdoch empire is bad for everyone bordering on dangerous, they are not “fit and proper persons” to run any media organiztion.
With the culture vultures in charge at the BBC we are never going to get right decisions
Posted on January 13, 2012 by Stevo
Where does this leave me MR E?
An avid viewer of F1 for 34 years, a devotee of the sport!
Dumped on from a great hight by a jumped up used car dealer…
Thanks Mr E ……. Enjoy the money while the ‘true’ fans of the sport walk away….
R.I.P F1