SKY exclusive deal for F1 live races from 2019 UK

[nevill3]

Sky and FOM have announced a new deal to run from 2019 to 2024 that grants Sky sports the exclusive rights to all the live formula 1 races in the UK, no more sharing races with terrestrial TV companies.

They will show the British GP " free to air" and highlights of all the other races and practice sessions free to air too. But if you want to watch the action live you will have to pay for it.

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/ ... until-2024

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/sky-s ... 81864/?s=1

This is sad news for me, I will not be watching the races any more because the highlights miss so much out it spoils it.

Thanks Bernie for stitching us up again

[Phil]

Ditto. I might be fortunate to live outside the UK, but German broadcast is pretty unbairable. The UK broadcast have been part of the reason why i enjoy watching F1. This includes the CH4 broadcast this year.

The sky broadcast is surely awesome, but not worth it since it's the only program i'd watch...

[ME4ME]

I don't live in the UK, but what does it cost per season for full F1 coverage on SKY?

I think it's reasonable to pay for good quality coverage. Any hobby/interest costs money at the end of the day. But of course there is a limit to what is reasonable.

[hemichromis]

about £25-30 a month, it does include sky sports though.

[horse]

I think most people buy Sky Sports for football. So Bernie is just admitting Formula One will never be as popular as football and he will just scoop up football revenues and Sky will give footie fans something to watch during the summer. Money talks and sports people don't care about the public, they just want paid.

[Just_a_fan]

This at the same time as the drivers' letter is rather ironic. Bernie putting another nail in the coffin. The only people who want F1 on Sky are Sky and Bernie. No one else.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/35882820

The bit about the British GP is a bit ambiguous. Is it going to be shown live free-to-air? Odd that they'd do that as that would, hypothetically, be their biggest selling race. Politics presumably.

I wouldn't mind paying, for example, £5 to watch a race live. I'm not going to pay £40/month just to watch F1. I'd rather put the nearly £500/year towards a holiday.

[horse]

The bit about the British GP is a bit ambiguous. Is it going to be shown live free-to-air? Odd that they'd do that as that would, hypothetically, be their biggest selling race. Politics presumably.

This is the same situation as Spain this year. The only race not behind a pay-wall is the Spanish GP.

[Just_a_fan]

Thanks for the confirmation horse. Must be political.

[adrianjordan]

Well....really might be time to find a different sport to follow....

[Just_a_fan]

Yeah, been thinking that for a couple of years - and I'm a Hamilton supporter!

Been watching F1 since the 80s...ah well.

[Sawtooth-spike]

Sad times,

I have sky, but i can only see this slowly killing the sport. Sky dont get high viewers figures.

Will we still have f1 in 10 years?

[RicME85]

The answer is to buy a NowTV box and just get a weekend sports pass or load up a stream on Kodi or Mobdro

[rich1701]

It's bad for formula 1 to retreat into the obscurity of pay per view broadcasting like Cricket has. Yes Highlights will apparently be free to air. But really that is not going to attract the same kind of ratings as live action sport.

Formula 1's popularity is in general decline, especially with younger audiences which are the future of long term sustainablity for the sport. How is this going to remedy that? it frustrates me a great deal that they not see this?

Instead CVC and FOM are obsessed with maxmimising revenue without implementing a long term strategy.

FOM's venture into the internet is pathetic providing woefully short 30 second clips of action past a present whilst implementing a drachonian policy towards fans of the sport on youtube who dare share full length content which can ONLY help the sport grow.

Formula 1 will die if this old fashioned, outdated model continues. It must embrace the internet fully, kind of the same they way WWE has and make that model work.

Rant over

[threep]

It's a bad decision. F1 is in a downwards spiral regards audience numbers, which in turn means companies find it a less attractive proposition for their marketing dollars. Putting F1 exclusively behind a pay wall in the UK will decimate audience figures. Cricket is a dead sport to me as its now only on pay TV. Golf is going the same way. Do they really not see the implications of such a decision? Sad and frustrating.

[TzeiTzei]

And slowly F1 drifts towards being a niche sport. It's been on pay tv here in Finland for about 10 years now and it has lost a huge amount of it's popularity.