Shame really. Selling their rights to ITV, which, as I remember it, will probably laden with adverts, thus ruining the race. IMO for UK viewers, just buy sky. £10 a month extra, just a couple of pints really. Wonder if DC will rejoin Sky again? He was brilliant together with Brundle.
To get the Sky F1 HD channel in the UK through Sky will cost £55+ a month depending on your deal as you need to buy the complete Sky Sports and HD package.
Nothing has been confirmed as yet so this is still just a rumour. Based on the threats of a multi Million Dollar "pull out" fee from Bernie Ecclesstone - It may not happen. New to SKY: £45.50 per month (£546 per year) Current SKY TV customers: £10 extra per month for 6 months and then £25.50 per month extra on top of the current subscription. So a tad more than "a couple of pints". I for one don't have SKY TV on a matter of principal. I don't like like they way they (and BT now), buy up all of the top sports to try to force fans to have to buy their TV packages if they want to watch their favourite sports ever again. SKY have done it with the football, boxing (When SKY TV first started, their proud boast was: "All sport is free on SKY TV". Then they got the Mike Tyson fights and put them on the subscription only Movie channel to force fight fans to pay to watch them - However, they still proudly advertised: "All sport is free on SKY TV"!), they tried to get exclusive rights to F1 (and failed! - At the time the Concorde agreement dictated that F1 had to made available on Free to air TV where available in Europe and so the BBC got the rights to live races - And then sold out the fans by selling half of the races back to SKY TV!). Want to watch live MotoGP? - You'll need BT TV then. Want to watch all the F1 races live? - You'll need either SKY TV with a sports package or a BT/Virgin/Now TV package that includes the SKY F1 channel. Either way you're going to have to pay more and more every month just to watch your favourite sport - A sport you used to be able to watch for free in the UK! Once the TV companies get exclusive rights then they have the fans by the short and curlies and can start charging whatever they want! Bernie Ecclestone has bemoaned the fact that TV viewing figures are on the decline, but he happily makes exclusive live TV deals with companies like SKY TV to get his multi-Millions, even though only @ a third of the UK actually has SKY TV. He then prices everyone else out of having the sport by citing how much SKY TV are prepared to pay! He gets the money but he's not getting the fans! - Eventually that will catch up with the sport! If it ends up that the only way you can watch any F1 in the UK is by paying SKY TV (or any of the other pay through the nose TV companies), then I'd rather give up watching it! Life in the UK is expensive enough already! It would be impossible For DC to rejoin SKY again as he's never worked for them! David Coulthard's F1 career finished at the end of the 2008 season and on the 25 November 2008 he signed up with the BBC where he's been ever since.
Oh wow, ok. Though what I have now I pay almost as much, and the quality of programs here is definitely sub-standard to UK. When I lived in the UK it was pretty much Sky, wasn't aware anyone really used the rest! IMO Sky is definitely worth it though, I've been all over the world but Sky is the only system that works properly, straight forward and best to use. Sucks that MotoGP is not on Sky.
So, you want everything for free? It's not going to happen; most sports will be increasingly supported by TV rights and paid viewing. This is a commercial world, don't you know? How do you expect FOM to pay the teams, if they don't have an income from TV rights? Have you thought about that? It's Bernie's duty to sell TV rights to the highest bidders to pay a larger share to the teams. Or do you think money grows on trees too? I don't suscribe to SKY or BT, and I watch highlights of most motorsport and motorcycling on other channels the same evening or the day after on recorded programmes. Whats wrong with that? I wouldn't waste a Sunday afternoon to stay in front of the box anyway; I much prefer going out. Watching sport live on TV is a waste of time, I consider.
Yep, agree (RE happy to pay). I'm in the process of moving to UK again and will finally have Sky, too. Packages with broadband included are just a little bit more expensive than over here. TV here is filled with ****, no red button either and the whole thing is too complicated. I'd be happy to pay the extra to get Sky F1 and it's excellent coverage. Sky may be ''expensive'', but it's well worth it.
Not every family that enjoys F1 has the money to spend on SKY TV! - Ever think of that? "Or do you think money grows on trees? " F1 used to be a sport for the fans - Now apparently the TV companies are far more important!
It's obvious that with a limited budget, the BBC cannot afford anymore to buy TV rights for the major sports anymore. It cannot be run like a charity. 2 solutions to improve that: - Increase the TV license fee until you have a public revolt against it. - Allow the BBC to join the big wide world and accept advertising income. The first solution is unlikely; the government has decriminalised non-payement of TV license. The second one is unthinkable for the socialist lobby at the Beeb. What do you propose?
Isn't ITV free? My opinion is solely that I'd be happy to pay the extra for Sky (once you already have it it's not that much more per month, hence my earlier comment saying it's only a few pints per month extra). Their whole coverage is definitely not cheap, all the people they employ and fly to the races. If you can't afford it or refuse to pay extra, watch it on ITV, even if it may be on a few hours later in some occasions.
Yes ITV is free; it's financed by advertising, which some people object to. But to watch TV in UK, you still have to pay a license, which pays for the BBC, even if you don't watch that! I agree with you that if people cannot afford SKY, they should wait a few hours and watch their GP on a free channel. That's what I do, and I cannot see any harm in that. The thing is not to become a slave to TV. My family would object if I sacrificed a sunny Sunday afternoon to be in front of the TV, instead of going to the seaside, or in the country side.
That's fine -If your happy to support SKY TV and it's business methods of buying up everything that is popular on TV that you used to watch for free on other channels (not just sport but comedies; dramas; documentaries; TV series' etc., etc) and then forcing you to pay to watch it from then onwards. Personally, I wont be doing it! If it's on the BBC or ITV in any way shape or form then that's exactly what I'll do! Once it becomes available only on SKY TV (or BT considering how they've jumped in to get Champions league football [previously free on ITV] and MotoGP [previously free on the BBC] ), then they can all go screw themselves!, I for one will not be rail-roaded that way! - I'd rather go without F1! (Thinking about it, it would save Me a shed load of grief and aggravation on Fchat as well as I'd no longer be able to contribute to the F1 section having seen none of the races! - Losing F1 could actually be good for My health! )
That's because these programmes become increasingly difficult to finance, and are now beyond the means of the TV. I cannot see where the problem is. I do not expect my entertainments to be free. You pay to attend a GP, why don't you want to pay to watch it? It has nothing to do with SKY, but with the demands most sports now makes to TV channels to be broadcasted. Some of the money goes back to the sports, the producing companies, the organisers, etc... It's a commercial world out there !!!
Have you never considered that it may be not SKY TV that was jumping "to get Champions league football [previously free on ITV] and MotoGP [previously free on the BBC]", but rather the FA and the FIM looking for more income for their sport? It's not a Murdoch conspiracy, but a commercial enterprise paying more to its suppliers! Again, what's wrong with that?
Well done BBC, first Top Gear now F1. The only two things I used to watch. And Murdoch can very well go dump himself.
You complain - but you've probably never had to see what NBC's F1 coverage of is here in the USA. Sky's F1 is exemplary sports coverage, I've never seen motor racing covered in such an engaging way anywhere.
People keep saying BBC is free, but I thought people had to pay license fees for that? And I thought that BBC only got coverage of a handful of races last year. Sky sports coverage is excellent. I wouldn't pay $55/mo though.
The BBC subsidised by the license fee (£136 per year) is a racket. It was OK when it started as a public service, before commercial interests stepped in, but it's an anachronism now. Commercial channels came, paid by advertising, at no cost to the viewers, but the BBC kept its privileged position, backed by governments. I think the BBC should be privatised or sold off, and the license fee stopped.
???....no red-button...too complicated..yadayadayada....?? Sky this, Sky that, do you work for Sky, or do have Sky stocks. TV all over the world is filled with, as you call it, ****. SKY massively included and on the forefront of it. And Sky seems to be taking over everything (sport at least). Which means you either pay too much or the sport doesn't get enough. The BBC has a great, worldclass F1 coverage, but up till now excluding in-race commercials. Which doesn't seem very sustainable given Bernie's/F1's appetite for $. That's quite obvious. Sky knows, no a child knows, how to exploid that gap. And "overhere" (the Netherlands) means you get the fastest internet from East to West, from North to South available in the world, broadband, glassfibre, you pay for it and you'll get it. But unlike SKY, all for a decent and relevant price. Not for a fancy pancy, flimsy whimsy, overpaid ANGLO$AXON, hey look at me, non quality, primadonna, non-delivering, all inclusive, ****ing $KY package... Ho.ho.ho. Merry Christmas.
I've got vast experience living abroad, including UK, spain, Africa, Caribbean etc so have sampled a lot of TV and their packages. Sky is by FAR the best. I speak as a consumer, I have no stocks nor do I have an interest in buying them. Their F1 coverage is by a long way the best, only BBC was able to compete commentary wise, but they didn't have live coverage for all races. And who cares if we have the fastest internet? Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, most of UK has the same decent speed. Same goes for the Netherlands, by the way. Live rural, and your internet drops to **** (factually speaking, my grandmother lives on the edge of town, and we where unable to get internet over 8mb. So there goes your ''netherlands wide superfast internet'' theory). Over a certain speed, you don't notice the difference between 50mb and 150mb anyhow. Dutch F1 commentary caters to the mouth breathers of this world, Olaf Mol dumbs it down so much, and he himself hasn't a clue what he's on about 9/10 times. Even some of my friends, who aren't that knowledgeable F1 wise, where cringing every time he opened his gob. As a service, sky is the best, therefore, if it's a bit more expensive, that's worth it. FYI, the Ziggo all in 1 package is €75 a month (tv, phone and internet). Not that many channels, more adverts than I can sit through. Personally, I've barely found something that interested me. And when I did, I could watch for 15 minutes before I was forced to watch 5-8 minutes of adverts. No thanks. Have a little go on Sky if you can. Tell me it isn't great then.
For those who insist on live coverage, you are probably right; SKY is a hard act to follow. It's not so, so expensive, but then, some people want everything for nothing, as if it was their right. I suppose that most sports and entertainments will move from a spectating audience to a TV viewers audience in future, and of course the organisers, the promoters must collect money from somewhere. They sell their show to TV channels that charge viewers. That seems like a good commercial model to me. I don't need live coverage, and can still see recorded races mostly for free.
It's possible that a US fan who watches F1 on the BBC through a VPN will be disappointed by the change to Sky. Really disappointed. I believe such fans exist.
Most certainly not Will.i.Am, but I see you. You should watch F1 on the BBC more often , which, íf I can récall correctly, isn't Dutch. No dreadfull, annoying commercials during the race + people like D.Coulthard, A.McNish and E.Jordan commenting. What's not to like. I'm just not a fan of the $hity Sky's, McDonald$'s, Facebook$ and other hollow, non-quality, overasking, overhyped, overvalued suppliers/companys like it; of which I see a lot of in the anglosaxon/US world.
