Formula One’s new owners believe the UK television rights deal they have inherited from the previous management, led by Bernie Ecclestone, is detrimental to the sport – with coverage entirely behind a paywall from 2019 to 2024
Well yes everyone knew that. It was the reason why F1 held out for so long to go onto pay TV
TL
toby lerone 2016
F1 going to pay tv is really down to the BBC, they realised they couldn't afford F1 after 3 excellent years of coverage and instead of keeping it for an extra year and let Channel 4 take up the rights exclusively from 2013 they went to Sky and came up with the existing agreement which gave them a foothold in the sport and let Bernie see the money that could come from it and from then it was always a slippery slope to exclusive F1 on Sky Sports.
The article above makes a valid point about sport on free to air TV and creating a balance between paid and free especially for those that are not football, the participation of Cricket has gone down massively since Channel 4 lost the rights to Sky, yes the England Test Cricket Team has probably never been so good but they have lost out massively. I have a feeling minority sports like Golf and F1 may go the same way with exclusive Sky Sports deals. I know Sky get decent viewers for a paid TV channel and they can be on from 6am in the morning to 10pm at night for Golf but when you think about it is ridiculous Nigeria v Iran in the World Cup has to be on BBC or ITV and they have no Cricket for example except highlights on Channel 5.
F1 going to pay tv is really down to the BBC, they realised they couldn't afford F1 after 3 excellent years of coverage and instead of keeping it for an extra year and let Channel 4 take up the rights exclusively from 2013 they went to Sky and came up with the existing agreement which gave them a foothold in the sport and let Bernie see the money that could come from it and from then it was always a slippery slope to exclusive F1 on Sky Sports.
I always find this a bit hard to believe. I can't imagine Sky would have happily sat back while it transferred seamlessly from the Beeb to C4, and had no thought about buying it until the Beeb approached them. They would have been eyeing it up for ages because of the amount of content it generated and the ABC1 audience it attracted and the small amount of motorsport they already had. They were already talking about it much more on Sky Sports News.
If the Beeb gave it up completely I don't know why there wouldn't have been a proper bidding process and Sky would have won it. They wouldn't have bought it on a whim.
It was pressure from McClaren and Williams that got F1 on Channel 4.
They sold space on their cars to advertisers based on 10 FTA races to the UK market until the end of the original BBC/Sky split deal.
If live F1 (bar the British GP) had gone from the start of the 2016 season, those teams would have had to pay back those advertisers for lack of exposure.
Maybe there is no get out of the Sky UK deal with Liberty Global for 2019-2024, but they could announce a highlights deal with Channel 4 and help out by reducing the window before the end of the race and the time they can start showing the supercut of the highlights.
For me I'd be cynical that perhaps the problem isn't with the fact that it's with a pay TV company, but rather the wrong pay TV company - the one which isn't controlled by John C Malone. Were the exclusive deal with Virgin Media they mightn't be complaining as loudly (and I am appreciative that Liberty Global and Liberty Media are two different companies, albeit both controlled by Malone).
It was pressure from McClaren and Williams that got F1 on Channel 4.
They sold space on their cars to advertisers based on 10 FTA races to the UK market until the end of the original BBC/Sky split deal.
If live F1 (bar the British GP) had gone from the start of the 2016 season, those teams would have had to pay back those advertisers for lack of exposure
As you quite rightly say when the BBC backed out at the end of the 2015 season it looked about 80% likely that the rights would go exclusively to Sky Sports but the teams were against it, when Channel 4 first won the rights they knew it was only going to be for 3 years and they probably guessed it would go to Sky afterwards, Apparantly there is still a chance Channel 4 or the BBC may cut a highlights deal with FOM for 2019 onwards but we'll see what happens.
F1 going to pay tv is really down to the BBC, they realised they couldn't afford F1 after 3 excellent years of coverage and instead of keeping it for an extra year and let Channel 4 take up the rights exclusively from 2013 they went to Sky and came up with the existing agreement which gave them a foothold in the sport and let Bernie see the money that could come from it and from then it was always a slippery slope to exclusive F1 on Sky Sports.
I always find this a bit hard to believe. I can't imagine Sky would have happily sat back while it transferred seamlessly from the Beeb to C4, and had no thought about buying it until the Beeb approached them. They would have been eyeing it up for ages because of the amount of content it generated and the ABC1 audience it attracted and the small amount of motorsport they already had. They were already talking about it much more on Sky Sports News.
If the Beeb gave it up completely I don't know why there wouldn't have been a proper bidding process and Sky would have won it. They wouldn't have bought it on a whim.
Well Channel 4 did have a bid ready and details are online, yes Sky would have sniffed around it but my point was at that point it was always on free to air in the UK on BBC or ITV therefore they were probably more likely to go with Channel 4 as the teams themselves didn't want it to go behind a paywall come 2012 and only agreed to Sky coverage as it was also on the BBC and come 2015 the teams also blocked exclusive Sky coverage letting Channel 4 come on board.
Last edited by toby lerone 2016 on 23 June 2017 2:35pm