JANUARY 23, 2018 Bratches defends F1 internet-pay TV plans Sean Bratches has defended Liberty Media's plans to ramp up internet coverage of F1 while moving the sport away from free-to-air television. Fans have noticed recently that the trend is for new television deals with pay-TV networks, with only a limited number of races shown free-to-air. Bratches, the new F1 commercial chief, said Liberty is also focused on the digital future. "The relaunch of our digital platform is planned," he told Auto Motor und Sport. "Today it only costs us money. Fans cannot download exclusive content. "That's going to change," Bratches explained. "We will introduce a direct streaming offer to the fans for both live content and non-live content. The fans will then get access to data directly from the cars. "One will be freely available, while the other for serious fans is behind a payment barrier." Previously, ousted F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone did not develop the sport's internet presence, arguing that television rights must remain exclusive. But Bratches claims: "The market has proven that both can be done simultaneously. Other sports are already much further ahead. "It's not like we're leaving our TV partners behind. This year, we will be offering a new TV graphics platform that presents content in a much more consumer friendly way," he said. As for the highly controversial move away from free-to-air TV coverage, he explained: "Free TV means reach, but the money is on pay TV. "Ideally, 25 to 30 per cent of the races should be on free TV and the rest behind a pay wall. It works in France and other countries, but there are countries where we should not move to this model yet," Bratches said.
I don't like that internet stuff. To me the internet works because of free access with a far reach. I despise anything with 'premium content'. If F1 becomes freely accessible online, great. If I have access to car telemetry for an extra 2.5$ they won't see my money.
F1 is often compared to MotoGP. (At least amongst my friends,) one of the big draws of MotoGP is its accessibility. Any living room or coffee shop with an internet connection is all that is required (along with a subscription to the content, of course). So many on this board think that F1 could learn a thing or two from MotoGP...well, they are.
The racing is not good enough for me to pay any extra to watch it. They are slowly killing F1 and this won't help.
I wait with baited breath. One day LM will have a F1 race viewable entirely under a subscription model. I predict their viewership will drop from 500,000,000 to 500,000. I further predict this will be the only race ever done that way.
Everyone is doing this now. MLB, nhl, nba, etc I don’t see the big deal I watch every Dodger game for free on my computer even though it’s blacked out in LA and LV. I watch every Golden Knights game for free also. Easy.
Even though I won't pay for any league passes, I will say the NBA, NFL and NHL are far more exciting to watch than F1. If I was going to pay for only one pass it wouldn't be for F1.
Apart from F1, I watch no other sport. And since F1 is already a snooze-fest, they can forget me paying to watch it.
I don't want to sit in my office and watch the race on my computer. I also don't want to watch on my iPad at the local coffee shop. I want to sit in my comfortable living room chair and watch on the big screen with the surround sound turned up - even though the sound recently sucks. And I want my TiVo to record the middle of the night races, and the races when I am travelling so that when I get home, I have the full screen experience. So long as I can continue to do that, I will consider extra content on the internet. However if the latter replaces the former, I will not be a happy bunny.
Do you currently watch it on cable or a dish network? If so, you/we are paying already. Just not a pay-per-view arrangement.
I don’t mind paying, I just don’t want it on my laptop, I want it on the big screeen. I already pay for the Sky f1 channel, that’s enough. If it goes internet only, it’ll lose us guys over 30
True, nothing is free. In fact, I pay extra to my cable provider in order to get the extra channels that carry World Rally Championship, BTCC, WTCC and Formula 4. But all of those are delivered via my channel of choice. I am not forced into an alternate delivery method.
I can watch the internet on all my TV's but it's not ideal. I only have one tier up from the most basic cable you can get. I hate to pay that.
I'm not at all interested in this kind of content delivery from F1. The racing is not worthy of a pay-per-view system.
thought I would post here....... Bad news for German F1 fans: Sky Germany (pay-tv) confirmed today it will NOT show any F1 races this season. So it looks like the races will be broadcasted only on RTL (free-tv) with ad breaks. #AMuS
What percentage of German F1 TV viewers watched the races on Sky Germany, compared to RTL? As Sky Germany are abandoning showing F1, I suspect the majority were watching it on RTL, so the bad news will only be for a limited number of fans. Knowing how Sky TV operates, if there was anyway whatsoever that it was profitable to show F1, then they would not be abandoning the market. This is the real bad news for F1 fans: Italy have just lost their free to air coverage of F1 due to Sky Italy having an exclusive deal, and as it stands right now, the UK is set to lose its free to air F1 coverage from 2019 due to the UK's Sky TV having an exclusive deal in place. Sky's thinking/hope is that, by getting exclusive rights to show any coverage of the F1 races (both live and highlights), they will force all of the F1 fans into having to subscribe to Sky TV, greatly increasing their revenue. And once they have got exclusive coverage, Sky will simply keep ramping up the subscription fees each year to make more and more money from their F1 cash-cow - Because that's how Sky operates! In both Italy and the UK, there is a Law in place that states that the home race is a protected event that has to be made available on free to air TV. In both Countries, Sky will get around this Law by showing the home race for each Country on one of it's Free-Sat channels that don't cost anything to receive. The only problem there is, you can only receive these channels if you have a Sky system installed (or another system capable of receiving these channels - not all systems can). In the UK, only @ a third of households have access to Sky's Free-Sat channels, which will greatly reduce the number of viewers for the British Grand Prix. On top of that, a large number of F1 fans in the UK are saying that, once the coverage goes exclusively to Sky, rather than paying an additional £500+ ( $700+) per year, just to get F1 coverage, they will simply abandon the sport and watch/do something else on their Sundays (on many an F1 race weekend in the UK, you can watch a whole day of the British Touring Car Championship and support races live on free TV. The racing is more often than not door handle to door handle, bumper to bumper racing - In many ways, far more exciting than F1 races!). I've watched both the Sky F1 coverage, and Channel 4's F1 coverage in the UK, and can honestly say that, the actual race coverage between the two is pretty much identical. For the extra £500+ per year, you don't actually gain much over the current free coverage. The commentators aren't much different (Sky have Martin Brundle who does a great job, but Channel 4 have David Coulthard, who does just as good a job), both are available in HD, and for live races (Channel 4 are limited to 10 live races only), both are advert free for the duration of the race. Added to that, sometimes, F1 races can become a bit boring, with not much going on, and at least with Channel 4's highlight races, you get to skip the dreary bits, so delayed coverage isn't always as bad as it may seem (My Sister once watched a live race on Sky that started in the wet, and was then delayed for a couple of hours due to extreme rain. She had to leave the channel on because she did not know at which point the race might start again. I watched Channel 4's highlights of the same race, where they showed the start up to the point of the red flag, mentioned the delay, skipped the two hours of rain falling on the track, and then showed all the best bits of the race when it restarted. Guess which one of us enjoyed the race coverage the most! ) The German F1 fans appear to have played an absolute blinder in My opinion! By not jumping on the Sky Germany F1 band wagon - signing up for their coverage, Sky TV have abandoned F1 there, and so RTL's TV deal has been seen by Liberty Media as being better than nothing, and having no F1 coverage at all in Germany. Sean Bratches doesn't seem to think the exclusive TV deals are going to be a bad thing for F1, but if the sport loses half to two thirds of it's TV viewers due to these deals, I suspect he will soon be changing his mind! For a company claiming that it wants to put the fans first, Liberty Media don't seem to be making much of an effort to ensure they get the most viewers possible!
Just mirror it to your tv with Apple TV or Chromecast. Easy and basically the same I watch Dodger and Golden Knights games on my big tv and in 4 channel sound. In fact I use my iPad or iPhone and don’t even bother with the computer. As long as it’s an upgrade option I don’t see the problem. F1 in America needs to grow. Restricting access does the opposite. And those stupid ads NBC ran every 5 minutes just ruined my interest.
Doubling down on stupid, I see. Every other pay per view sport is showing massive decline in viewership. F1 lost almost 38MM viewers in 2017 vs 2016. This number will be larger this year. People do not want to pay for something that is only just barely worth being free. The big question is, what is the # at which F1 hits that magical overshoot and collapse moment. At the current rate of decline, F1 will have 210MM viewers in 5 years. Liberty Media are already sweating the bank account! I think their only plan is to milk the cow down to the marrow as quickly as they can before all that's left is hooves.
It's very simple...have it free to air (via internet), with ads. Optional pay per view package with all the extras, no ads, choose cameras, choose commentator feed, extended pre-after shows and so on. People will pay if the show is improved enough (with my set of ideas on how to improve the sport ). At the current state of F1 I'd go for option 1....
Which F1 races will be live on Channel 4 in 2018? The Monaco and British Grands Prix will be among 10 races broadcast live on terrestrial television in the UK by Channel 4 in 2018. Channel 4 and Sky Sports announced on Monday how their live races will be divided in 2018, with the season opening round in Australia exclusively live on Sky. The races in Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Monaco, Austria, Britain, Belgium, Singapore, Japan, USA and Abu Dhabi will be live on Channel 4. It means the returning French and German Grands Prix will be exclusive live events for Sky. Channel 4 will show delayed highlights of the 11 races it is not broadcasting live. This is the final year of Channel 4's three-year F1 broadcast deal, with the championship to be shown exclusively on Sky from next season. 2018 F1 TV schedule in the UK Race Date Live on Australian Grand Prix March 23-25 Sky Bahrain Grand Prix April 6-8 Sky/Channel 4 Chinese Grand Prix April 13-15 Sky Azerbaijan Grand Prix April 27-29 Sky/Channel 4 Spanish Grand Prix May 11-13 Sky Monaco Grand Prix May 25-27 Sky/Channel 4 Canadian Grand Prix June 8-10 Sky French Grand Prix June 22-24 Sky Austrian Grand Prix June 29-July 1 Sky/Channel 4 British Grand Prix July 6-8 Sky/Channel 4 German Grand Prix July 20-22 Sky Hungarian Grand Prix July 27-29 Sky Belgian Grand Prix August 24-26 Sky/Channel 4 Italian Grand Prix August 31-September 2 Sky Singapore Grand Prix September 14-16 Sky/Channel 4 Russian Grand Prix September 28-30 Sky Japanese Grand Prix October 5-7 Sky/Channel 4 United States Grand Prix October 19-21 Sky/Channel 4 Mexican Grand Prix October 26-28 Sky Brazilian Grand Prix November 9-11 Sky Abu Dhabi Grand Prix November 23-25 Sky/Channel 4 https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/134102/channel-4-reveals-2018-live-f1-races
Has anyone heard anything about the US ESPN coverage for this coming season? I've been searching but haven't found anything about format or commentary team - just speculation.
I'm in Italy so I guess its going to be find a Live Stream somewhere to watch the races or just wait for a torrent to pop up. I would love to see an F1 app on Apple TV and would gladly pay $10 to $20 for 3 days of coverage per Race weekend. This would be a no brainer! Streaming via Internet via F1 Youtube or another site with Ads would also be better than zero. As many others said I just don't see the value in a Sky Subscription service just to watch F1...
