BBC / Sky Sports

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spinmastermic
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57

Petition to bring the Sky deal to Parliment. Needs 100,000 signatures.

wesley123
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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I cannot sign it I have to be a citizen of the UK to sign it, guess these ego maniacs do not think about the fact that there are people outside the UK who are affected way more by this then guys from the UK
"Bite my shiny metal ass" - Bender

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spinmastermic
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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I can't sign it either but the BBC is the only channel on which I can watch F1. I'd be even more angry if I was british.

donskar
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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Pup wrote:
donskar wrote:I want to sincerely urge you technical boffins to work together (perhaps PMs?) to work out a workaround that is understandable, accessible, and usable by the average F1 fan. The ideal goal is to have thousands (at least) F1 fans watching the races FREE -- and legally. I ask not for myself: my 70-hour weeks provide me with enough filthy lucre to buy the cable package that includes Speed.
Just out of curiosity, at what point do you declare victory in this plan? Is it when the BBC's numbers fall enough that their already tenuous support for F1 drops to zero and they cancel their contract entirely, or is it after Sky realizes that their subscriber base isn't rising enough so they decide to supplement their revenue with adverts during the race?
"Victory"? It's not a matter of winning and losing. Goal is to allow serious fans to follow their sport for free (or losest possible cost) and legally.
Enzo Ferrari was a great man. But he was not a good man. -- Phil Hill

i70q7m7ghw
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Joined: 12 Mar 2006, 00:27
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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This thing is really gaining steam:-
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57

It needs to average 3000 signs a day to achieve the 100,000 before it's close date, if it continues at the current rate it'll make it no problems.

Pup
Pup
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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donskar wrote:Goal is to allow serious fans to follow their sport for free (or lo[w]est possible cost) and legally.
That 'serious' qualifier is interesting, but serious or not, I'm not sure of the ethics involved. Mind you, I don't claim a sainthood in that regard, but I'm self aware enough not to wrap that behavior in Robin Hood's cloak. No one here is fighting the man, or providing alms for the poor. As I've said before, F1 isn't a necessity of life, and there's no duty, public or private, to provide gratis F1 for the masses.

But that's a broader, tangential discussion. If a Texan wants free F1, that's cool. I'm just not sure what that has to do with the BBC/Sky deal. The BBC was never providing F1 to the world, however broad their reach. They have gone to some trouble, in fact, to make sure that we in the US don't have BBC access. So your call to arms sounds, to me at least, more like you're hijacking the BBC issue to use our UK friends' ire as a means to get someone to provide you a free stream. And for me, too, so I actually wish you luck. :lol:
Last edited by Pup on 05 Aug 2011, 21:11, edited 1 time in total.

beelsebob
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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Diesel wrote:This thing is really gaining steam:-
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57

It needs to average 3000 signs a day to achieve the 100,000 before it's close date, if it continues at the current rate it'll make it no problems.
Uh no, it needs an average of 280 a day. It's currently achieving about 3000 a day.

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Ray
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They signed a deal (the BBC) to have some stupid reality show like the X-Factor called The Voice at a cost of £22 million. How much did the BBC claim they had to cut back on F1 to reduce their cost? Seems to me they had this planned all along. Shame really, that people are forced to pay for something as a tax on their income and all the TV station is worried about is the financial state of privately funded Formula 1 teams. If I were in charge, I'd tell the teams to either raise their own money, or get the hell out. It's not the people of Britain that should be worried about their finances and certainly not to the point of taxing them so they can see a sporting event that relies on eyeballs to sell the sponsors wares. Time to get the fans of Formula 1 in England to go to the front doorstep of the BBC offices and get in their faces.

Just_a_fan
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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spinmastermic wrote:http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57

Petition to bring the Sky deal to Parliment. Needs 100,000 signatures.
Signed.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.

i70q7m7ghw
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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beelsebob wrote:
Diesel wrote:This thing is really gaining steam:-
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57

It needs to average 3000 signs a day to achieve the 100,000 before it's close date, if it continues at the current rate it'll make it no problems.
Uh no, it needs an average of 280 a day. It's currently achieving about 3000 a day.
#-o no idea where I got that 3000 number from, still if it keeps up at that rate it'll do it in approx a months time.

donskar
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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Pup wrote:
donskar wrote:Goal is to allow serious fans to follow their sport for free (or lo[w]est possible cost) and legally.
That 'serious' qualifier is interesting, but serious or not, I'm not sure of the ethics involved. Mind you, I don't claim a sainthood in that regard, but I'm self aware enough not to wrap that behavior in Robin Hood's cloak. No one here is fighting the man, or providing alms for the poor. As I've said before, F1 isn't a necessity of life, and there's no duty, public or private, to provide gratis F1 for the masses.

But that's a broader, tangential discussion. If a Texan wants free F1, that's cool. I'm just not sure what that has to do with the BBC/Sky deal. The BBC was never providing F1 to the world, however broad their reach. They have gone to some trouble, in fact, to make sure that we in the US don't have BBC access. So your call to arms sounds, to me at least, more like you're hijacking the BBC issue to use our UK friends' ire as a means to get someone to provide you a free stream. And for me, too, so I actually wish you luck. :lol:
Before you make that sort of serious accusation: "hijacking . . . to get someone to provide you a free stream" you might at least have the maturity to read my posts. I stated clearly that the financial issue does not concern me. Thanks to Toyota, my income makes the cost of getting Speed TV on cable trivial to me. I have no personal ax to grind here at all. How about you?
Enzo Ferrari was a great man. But he was not a good man. -- Phil Hill

Richard
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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As far as I can make out, F1 is not free. They charge a lot of people who have never watched a race. All those Vodaphone customers are paying huge amounts to McLaren for example. So one could argue that a subscription service is fairer.

However, teams will become more reliant on Bernie. The cash is being further concentrated in the hands of a few (ie Sky, Bernie, CVC) instead of many (teams & sponsors).

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forty-two
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richard_leeds wrote:As far as I can make out, F1 is not free. They charge a lot of people who have never watched a race. All those Vodaphone customers are paying huge amounts to McLaren for example. So one could argue that a subscription service is fairer.

However, teams will become more reliant on Bernie. The cash is being further concentrated in the hands of a few (ie Sky, Bernie, CVC) instead of many (teams & sponsors).
Rich is right here, but what some, including the person who started the petition on the HM Gov website seem to have forgotten is that showing races on BBC, ITV, Ch4 or Ch5 or indeed the tens of channels on Freeview is not Free to Air, it requires a subscription, it's called the TV license.

I don't expect people in the rest of the world to understand this fully, but here in the UK, anyone who has any kit which can receive a live TV signal via any means (cable, sky or an antenna plugged into a TV card on a PC) must have a TV license. This money goes to the Beeb, and frankly for the money they charge, the output is pretty darn good. Saying that you don't watch BBC channels is no excuse, if you have the kit, you must pay or break the law.

In a way, because of the barrel we're over, this issue makes it even harder to take. The BBC have a legally binding mandate to show programmes that license fee payers want to watch. It doesn't matter if "what people want to watch" happens to be intricate details of how snow is formed or how cheese is made, they must show it, or they have failed to comply with their mandate.

Therefore, if a significant number of those who have a TV license want to watch F1 live, it is their job to do their utmost to provide it. If another provider such as Channel 4 outbid them, then that's fine, we'll have to make do with the adverts. To put live F1 behind a paywall for 50% of the races is frankly not good enough.

I am not a theif, so I will not be watching an illegal stream which someone else is paying for, and nor am I happy to watch only half of the season live, so for me, this year is the last F1 season I shall be following.

All the talk about the percentage of people watching F1 globally must be taken with a pinch of salt. There are a number of countries who get F1 on TV where the inhabitants are unlikely to spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds sterling (or it's equivalent) on "A Product" as a result of seeing "A Sponsor" on F1 on tv. For example, for the last few years, I have always insisted on Bridgestone tyres on my car (believe me, I get through a lot of these!), as has my Wife, Sister, Mother and Father. For me, that's four sets of four tyres a year, and perhaps 2 for all the others (that's 12 tyres per annum for me, plus (8 x 4) = 44 tyres at around £100 a pop = £4,400). Do you think an F1 viewer in say Estonia would be spending the same cash on tyres per year as a direct result of F1? I don't.

Tyres is actually only one example of many of the incluence of F1 for me, and I consider myself to be fairly market savvy. Incidentally, since December last year, I and my family have switched to Pirelli.

What I am driving at here, is that a 5% share of audience figures here in the UK does not mean the same as a 5% share in many other countries who watch F1. Heck, Vodafone is not even a mobile operator in lot's of countries who watch F1, but they still adorn the McLaren with sponsorship!

I am also concerned that after the honeymoon period where the teams are getting an extra £1 Million from Bernie has ended, and their sponsorship revenue has dried up, what will that leave F1 with? I for one don't want to see a Williams Corsa, or a Red Bull Focus any time soon. This deal is going to kill F1, and I wonder if Bernie knows this?

Thanks to anyone that bothered to read my rant!
The answer to the ultimate question, of life, the Universe and ... Everything?

Pup
Pup
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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donskar wrote:I stated clearly that the financial issue does not concern me. Thanks to Toyota, my income makes the cost of getting Speed TV on cable trivial to me.
You've said that on numerous occasions, yes. But money isn't at issue, since there's no way you can get the BBC feed in the US right now no matter how much you pay. Hey, I'd love to get it too, and would have no qualms about watching it since I wouldn't be depriving the BBC of income by doing so. I just say be open about the motives, that's all. And if I'm wrong about them, I'm wrong. The distinction for me is that while I might take advantage of a stream were it available, I would not feel comfortable about encouraging others to break the law for my benefit.

Pup
Pup
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Re: BBC / Sky Sports

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42, I don't disagree with anything you wrote. But, I think the point you make about the international vs the UK audiences is relevant within the UK as well. Sky provides a far more targeted, and I imagine wealthier, audience than the BBC.

Since I've been accused recently of repeating myself, I dare not. I quote, instead...
Surely many of the sponsors target the UK market along with the rest of the world, but I'm talking about those who are primarily targeting the UK. What I'm getting at is that if the UK is, say, 5% of the F1 market, and the Sky deal reduced that number by, worst case, half, then the average sponsor is only looking at a 2-3% drop in penetration overall, which is within the yearly fluctuations of the viewership anyway. And of the viewers who drop out, you of course have to ask if they were ever in the sponsor's demographics to begin with. That is, Mercedes or Tag Heuer probably don't care if someone who can't afford the price of Sky drops out of the market, harsh as that may sound; though someone like Santander might. That's what I meant when I suggested that the Sky viewership might well be more valuable to many sponsors, even if it's smaller.

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