gbduo

F1 Fans are completely different to football fans, plus there are 20 races in a F1 season, how many football matches are there in the same space, 100, 150? If you have to pay nigh on £80 a month for phone, TV, Internet and Sky Sports, the VfM is better on football than on F1. Why would you pay nearly £1000 a year to watch the F1 season? You just wouldn't.

Why you would pay £1000 a year to Sky in the first place is the next question.

lovegroova

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbduo

News (followed by Ch.4 news for an impartial review)

That's quite funny.

Left-wing BBC News and even more left wing Ch.4 News. For impartiality/balance you need...Sky News!
I get my TV (incl Sky sports), BB and phone from Virgin Media for around £60 a month.

Plenty of peole have switched to Skysports in order to watch a variety of sports. Many for Football (around 80 Premiership Games per season are shown, most people will only watch 20 of those), lots for cricket (we can now watch Ashes matches live from Australia, something that never happened before Sky), US PGA Golf, Super League Rugby, Premiership Rugby, Darts etc etc.

F1 will be a good addition to their portfolio.

Would I pay for Sky Sports just for F1? Probably not.

Will I watch the races on the BBC instead of Sky when there is a choice? Time will tell. Certainly the race coverage will be the same as it's supplied by Formula One - all that will differ is the commentary/pit lane reporting.

Sky will tailor the coverage to the audience - contrast its cricket/rugby union coverage to its football coverage - the difference is marked.

Just be grateful it's not on ITV.

andy2000

I did read somewhere that one of the F1 agreements (not sure if its the Concorde Agreeement) states that F1 must be "free to air".

not sure if that means "live" free to air or whether they can get around this clause by saying highlights are free.

I do have Sky as well as BBC but I'd be a bit miffed if I start getting charged to watch a full live race. Personally I Sky+ any race that I miss live and then try desperately to avoid news or internet so I dont see the result before I get the chance to watch it. Highlights just aren't the same.

BBC have really made a good job of F1 and I thinks its a real shame that this isnt recognised by their management.

Dembo

£1000 a year? It's £12.50 a month extra for Sky Sports 1, which is actually pretty much the same as the BBC licence fee. You need the base package as well, but that's £19.50 a month. So that's £384 a year, or £150 a year if like me you're a Sky (but not Sports) subscriber. And Sky have ~10 million customers, which means roughly half of British households.

mattlad

I do the same, avoiding the news / internet like the plague and watch some of the races on Sky+.

How much are we going to get on the "highlights"? Half the race? Half an hour? It is simply not possible to to read and follow a race unless you watch all of it.

A friend of mine who watches kickball or whatever it is called said that Sky has done an excellent job of coverage of the game BUT as he says "At a price........" Sky say they are not going to put any adverts in the race itself and they also say they are going to have, to quote Barney Francis MD of Sky Sports:- "We will give F1 the full Sky Sports treatment with a commitment to each race never seen before on UK television. As well as unrivalled build up to each race on Sky Sports News, we will broadcast in-depth live coverage of every session." but if these parts are going to be punctuated by advertising then I cannot see it being an enjoyable viewing experience..............


The BBC, are quite unbelievably actually doing a good job at the moment (Okay not sure about EJ) they have pulled in 10 million viewers so why have they thrown the baby out with the bathwater?

mattlad

Sorry.......... Don't know why the font size went all over the place in my last post!

gbduo

Oops, looks like my figures are inflated, I honestly thought that £80 a month for phone, tv, internet and sky sports was about right, prices have dropped because when we had all that with Sky we were paying nearly £90 a month, which is why we don't have it now!

It is still for me, £384 which I currently do not have to pay on top of the £140 licence fee. Seems like a ridiculous amount of money just to watch the F1.

The BBC viewing figures for the British GP and the German GP each were well over 10 million people, there is no way that 10 million people subscribe to Sky Sports. I think the F1 averages about 7 million people, even then I don't think Sky Sports has that many subscribers. It is very bad for the sport.

gbduo

Haha, Ch. 4 news at least goes into some detail on news stories though, it is quite lefty but you can normally filter it out from the facts in Ch.4 news compared to BBC News constant drivel and speculation from 'experts'

Sky News certainly has some characters on it, I love some of the videos on youtube from Sky, I think it was Boulton or something who nearly had a punch up with the Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell in the run up to the General Election last year, I was really hoping for it because that is what Campbell needs, someone to punch the *&nt round the face.

I go and support my local premiership rugby team, London Irish at the Madejski which is close to me and watch the Rugby highlights on ITV4, six nations on BBC. I just can't justify spending the best part of £50-60 a month to just watch the F1.

Internet streaming is the way forward, I believe RTL offer a free stream, you just put Five Live on as the commentary.

GarethB

From what I've read so far the BBC will show the prime time races, Sky get the other ones.
Martin Brundle said his contract is up anyway....2 year presenter contract but a four year deal?

At the moment all race cams are the same anyway, so coverage of the race itself wouldn't change even if both Sky and BBC sent a reporting crew. I can understand why they're doing it - especially given the Tory govt's hatred of anything they think is not competitive.

It's a whole other thread, but between Labour's obsession with league tables and the Tory obsession with competition / privatisation it's a wonder we manage to do anything. I don't want choice for my hospital or school I just want the nearest one to be bloody good. /rant

Dembo

On the subject of internet streaming: I have iPlayer on my TV, but the last 3 races it hasn't had the practice sessions that I'd quite like to watch on a Friday eve, even though it is available on the web version of iPlayer (watching it now). I even sent a complaint to the BBC, but they ignored me. If Sky Sports do show the practice live, then at least we'll have the option of recording it. It's one example of where Sky Sports will probably provide a better service if for no other reason than they do less things, whereas on BBC One you always get the impression that F1 comes second to Eastenders, Wimbledon, Antiques Roadshow, etc., etc.

But do you really think taxpayer's money should be going to secure the rights for a multi billion-pound, and popular sport like F1? The arguments in favour of the BBC (and there are many) can't really be applied to them outbidding the likes of Sky and ITV for sporting rights. As a taxpayer funded service, their remit should be to bring us sports coverage we might not see elsewhere, not going for F1, Football, Cricket etc. that will always be popular.