More Bernie desperation

[toraabe]

First of all let the drivers race wheel to wheel without getting punished.
It should be legal to push and force yourself through with accident as result if you are too hard.
Otherwise let's reintroduce ground effect, wider tyres wider cars and only allow single flap wings...
1000 hp engine with separate wastegate outlet for better sound..
600 kg net weight with driver.

[Andres125sx]

Phil, even when Italy data is only 1% it´s a whole country IMO every country is similar so they´re representative. Specially when you see a decline even on Ferrari domination era. If Italy is proud of Ferrari on that period audience should increase, or at least be constant, but it was decreasing. How can you explain that?

As you pointed out, Imola was on the calendar yet, so they still enjoyed two GPs. There´s no reason to explain this, apart from lack of competitiveness. Domination from one team is the most harmful thing any sport may suffer.

BTW; While doing some research, this is what I had to find:

http://motorsportstalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... e-problem/

The quality of the racing is important, yet it is not the problem here. 2008 was the ‘peak’ in terms of viewership, booming at 600m. However, this was a year dominated by McLaren and Ferrari, and arguably less exciting than the recent clashes between Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. There is little reason for less fans to be watching because they simply don’t like what they see.

I can´t agree with Mr. Smith here. Arguably 2008 was less exciting than RBR or Mercedes domination eras? No way. 2008 was the last season when two teams performed so similar they were fighting for both championships to the last race.... actually to the last lap. We´ve not seen that competitiveness again, that was last season there was no domination from one team, and curiously that was the peak of viewership, from that season TV audience decline began. Coincidence? Don´t think so

Moreover, there´s an aspect nobody mentioned yet. F1 is expanding to new countries (India, Korea, Singapore, Rusia, USA, China, Abu Dhabi, Dubai...) so audience should be increasing by a good rate, it´s not one single new country, but many, so audience should be much better than 5-10 years back. Instead of that it´s decreasing what means new viewers from all those countries cannot compensate the decline in traditional countries, as simple as that

The peak in audience was exactly last season there was a tough battle between two teams, but that must be a coincidence. Sorry but I can´t buy this argument

[bdr529]

I can´t agree with Mr. Smith here. Arguably 2008 was less exciting than RBR or Mercedes domination eras? No way. 2008 was the last season when two teams performed so similar they were fighting for both championships to the last race.... actually to the last lap. We´ve not seen that competitiveness again, that was last season there was no domination from one team, and curiously that was the peak of viewership, from that season TV audience decline began. Coincidence? Don´t think so

It's not just competitiveness or domination by one team that effects the paying public. Some have forgotten what happened near the end of 2008 and that outcome would effect the spending habits of a lot of people for the fallowing years.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers, a sprawling global bank, in September 2008 almost brought down the world’s financial system. It took huge taxpayer-financed bail-outs to shore up the industry. Even so, the ensuing credit crunch turned what was already a nasty downturn into the worst recession in 80 years
http://www.economist.com/news/schoolsbr ... rs-article

Moreover, there´s an aspect nobody mentioned yet. F1 is expanding to new countries (India, Korea, Singapore, Rusia, USA, China, Abu Dhabi, Dubai...) so audience should be increasing by a good rate, it´s not one single new country, but many, so audience should be much better than 5-10 years back. Instead of that it´s decreasing what means new viewers from all those countries cannot compensate the decline in traditional countries, as simple as that

Yes Mr.Smith talks about Chinia in that article

It is simply a case of looking at the facts. In 2013, there was a fall of 50m that prompted many a well-documented concern in the F1 community. However, less well-documented was the fact that 46m of this fall was in just two markets where the sport had switched to pay TV. The move away from free-to-air (FTA) cost the sport 30m viewers in China and 16m in France – so a relative fall of 4m is far less concerning

I don't think you can come to a reasonable conclusion as to why they left, until you can find out where they went

[Andres125sx]

I can´t agree with Mr. Smith here. Arguably 2008 was less exciting than RBR or Mercedes domination eras? No way. 2008 was the last season when two teams performed so similar they were fighting for both championships to the last race.... actually to the last lap. We´ve not seen that competitiveness again, that was last season there was no domination from one team, and curiously that was the peak of viewership, from that season TV audience decline began. Coincidence? Don´t think so

It's not just competitiveness or domination by one team that effects the paying public. Some have forgotten what happened near the end of 2008 and that outcome would effect the spending habits of a lot of people for the fallowing years.

Crisis only affect PPV, as a construction engineer in spain I can assure few people is more affected than myself, but I never stopped watching F1 because it´s free here (last season btw, it goes PPV next season )

Obviously it will affect, but not at the same rate audience has dropped

Yes Mr.Smith talks about Chinia in that article

It is simply a case of looking at the facts. In 2013, there was a fall of 50m that prompted many a well-documented concern in the F1 community. However, less well-documented was the fact that 46m of this fall was in just two markets where the sport had switched to pay TV. The move away from free-to-air (FTA) cost the sport 30m viewers in China and 16m in France – so a relative fall of 4m is far less concerning

I don't think you can come to a reasonable conclusion as to why they left, until you can find out where they went

No, he´s talking about audience lost due to going ppv. I was talking about a different matter. Traditionally F1 was only watched in Europe and some countries in South America (Brazil and Argentina mainly), but lately it´s being extended to many countries (India, USA, China, Malaysia, Arabic Emirates, Rusia...), so audience numbers should be increasing a lot, but reality is even with all these new countries they´re still going down

What I mean is new countries are only making up reality, F1 interest is going down quite fast, not even some millions of new viewers from all those countries can compensate audience drop on traditional countries. If we ignore all those new countries and only consider audience on traditional countries, audience graphs will be depressing.... or would be if they´d share the numbers, but for some reason they do not publish this data

The only one I´ve found is that I posted about Italy, and it´s quite illustrative

[bdr529]

Crisis only affect PPV, as a construction engineer in spain I can assure few people is more affected than myself, but I never stopped watching F1 because it´s free here (last season btw, it goes PPV next season )

You, Me, or anyone else on this forum are not good examples of the general F! viewing audience.

No, he´s talking about audience lost due to going ppv. I was talking about a different matter. Traditionally F1 was only watched in Europe and some countries in South America (Brazil and Argentina mainly), but lately it´s being extended to many countries (India, USA, China, Malaysia, Arabic Emirates, Rusia...), so audience numbers should be increasing a lot, but reality is even with all these new countries they´re still going down

What I mean is new countries are only making up reality, F1 interest is going down quite fast, not even some millions of new viewers from all those countries can compensate audience drop on traditional countries. If we ignore all those new countries and only consider audience on traditional countries, audience graphs will be depressing.... or would be if they´d share the numbers, but for some reason they do not publish this data

I understand what you are saying about dwindling view numbers in the "traditional F1" markets but as the article points out if China and France had not moved to PPV then the total loss in viewing numbers would have only been 4 million.
And yes you would hope that the new counties would make up the difference, but they are not as you say 'Traditional" so it's going to take time to build a racing culture in these countries.
And if fans in the traditional markets don't like watching F1 any more, what's that telling viewers in the new countries

As for your graph of Italian tv numbers falling, it is a bit of a head scratch-er as to why the numbers go down as fast as Ferrari domination went up. I guess nobody wanted to watch the same movie over & over again, except the die hard F1 fans like our self's.
I think the total number of F1 viewers right know might be the total Base group of fans, the die hard's that will watch as long as they race.

[TzeiTzei]

One problem with PPV is that it turns F1 more into a niche sport. In Finland F1 has been on PPV since 2006 or 2007, and it's very easy to see that the general following of F1 has dropped quite a lot. During Häkkinen's championship years we could have almost half of the population watching some of the races. People talked about F1. Now it's completely different. Only people who are really into F1 bother to buy the tv channel. The rest have pretty much stopped following F1. While PPV might be a good financial solution in short term, over a longer period of time F1 will lose more and more of its fan base.

[Andres125sx]

Crisis only affect PPV, as a construction engineer in spain I can assure few people is more affected than myself, but I never stopped watching F1 because it´s free here (last season btw, it goes PPV next season )

You, Me, or anyone else on this forum are not good examples of the general F! viewing audience.

True, I was only pointing to the fact crisis only affect audience numbers on those countries with pay per view

As for your graph of Italian tv numbers falling, it is a bit of a head scratch-er as to why the numbers go down as fast as Ferrari domination went up. I guess nobody wanted to watch the same movie over & over again, except the die hard F1 fans like our self's.

Exactly, but that´s the same for 2009 season, 2011 season, 2013 season, and probably 2015 season. When any sport is this constant about lack of uncertainty and it becomes the same movie over and over, audience go down

But this shouldn´t be any surprise, that´s the reason for DRS, for crappy tires, for double scoring at last race, for EBD ban, for FRIC ban, etc All those innovations/rules are an attempt to do the championship more interesting, because with any team domination audience go down

We hardcore fans can enjoy midfielders battles, but the vast mayority of viewers don´t, if they know who will win beforehand, they don´t bother watching. And they are more important than us, because they´re a lot more people and affect audience numbers much more than us


Luckily some day they´ll realize it´s aero what makes the differences and also the responsible for the lack of real overtakings (I mean, not related to different tires/strategies or without DRS), and they´ll finally solve it instead of patching the sport with multiple and funny ideas not related with the root of the problem that solve nothing

[Moxie]

I beginning to find this stuff funny in a pathetic kind of way. For all of the bickering about what fans want to see from F1, for all of the discussion about whether or not the forum at F1 technical represents a typical view of F1, for all of the bickering about what measures wil or will not improve F1, none of you will agree to a scientific economic approach to studying F1, and its fans. I'm not saying that economists and game theorists hold the answers to the universe, but for crying out loud, a little bit of scientific insight goes a long way towards solving problems of many varieties.

[Just_a_fan]

Luckily some day they´ll realize it´s aero what makes the differences and also the responsible for the lack of real overtakings (I mean, not related to different tires/strategies or without DRS), and they´ll finally solve it instead of patching the sport with multiple and funny ideas not related with the root of the problem that solve nothing

"Aero". So is that too much downforce, not enough downforce, too much wake turbulence, not enough wake turbulence? What do you mean by "aero"?

I watched some of the WEC race held at Spa yesterday. There were cars with lots of downforce that were overtaking each other whilst cars without meaningful downforce weren't overtaking each other. So do we need more downforce?

One thing I did notice was the grid - well over 30 cars. Lots of cars run by teams that didn't build the car. I did notice that there is no Ferrari works team. Perhaps that's the answer - chuck Ferrari out of F1 and allow customer teams!

[Andres125sx]

Luckily some day they´ll realize it´s aero what makes the differences and also the responsible for the lack of real overtakings (I mean, not related to different tires/strategies or without DRS), and they´ll finally solve it instead of patching the sport with multiple and funny ideas not related with the root of the problem that solve nothing

"Aero". So is that too much downforce, not enough downforce, too much wake turbulence, not enough wake turbulence? What do you mean by "aero"?

Too much wake turbulence obviously. Downforce must be limited only by tracks safety, cornering at 8G wouldn´t be safe because there´s no track with enough safe zones for such a fast cornering speed, so IMO this should be the limit for downforce, track safety. Today it´s probably a bit too low, but that´s mandatory if you want to allow some development

But wake turbulence has no sense and only ruin the show. There are some millions rules to regulate anything, so I don´t see the reason the most harmful aspect to the sport cannot be regulated, because it is wake turbulence what reduce overtakings and the entertainment

Without wake turbulence (or minimized) F1 wouldn´t need tires made for intentionally wear or artificial DRS systems to see some (boring) overtakes, and the show will be much much better

[Andres125sx]

Montmelo was another european race with half empty stands

But some people still refuse to accept F1 has serious problems...

[Hail22]

Didn't know if this had been posted yet, but this is what happened in the last 24 hours:

http://www.news.com.au/sport/motorsport ... 7356147068

[FW17]

So customer cars are in? (I doubt it as the so called top 4 has been asked to evaluate and propose)

I would have preferred if communist idea had come in.

[Kiril Varbanov]

The latest strategy meeting is absolute waste of time and great shame. But, historically, every sport has its ups and downs. F1 is ... well, floating in between. None of the highly paid seniors seems to care about anything else than his team's interest and money.

[ChrisF1]

Refuelling returns (subject to approval)