Sky’s IndyCar scheduling this weekend

So this weekend there is Live IndyCars on Sky Sports 2 at 02:30. Which is fair enough, that’s just the luck of the draw unfortunately that some races are on in the early hours. What I don’t get, though, is where the repeats are scheduled, or rather the lack of repeats are scheduled on one particular channel. Scrolling through the channels, I see:

– 02:30 to 05:00 – Sky Sports 2 [live]
– 10:00 to 12:00 – Sky Sports 2 [repeat]
– 17:00 to 19:00 – Sky Sports 4 [repeat]
– 20:00 to 22:00 – Sky Sports 3 [repeat]

Two of the three repeats are either against F1 or Football while the other repeat is against the Legends programme featuring Mika Hakkinen on Sky Sports F1.

With scheduling like this, it is as if Sky are not willing to commit to IndyCars given the disastrous three thousand viewers last Saturday. Fact is there, there are a lot of people that want to watch IndyCars, but can’t. Why? Because they have Sky Sports F1 but don’t have the other Sky Sports channels. I outlined the various ratings reasons here, but to summarise, this is how the IndyCar Series has rated so far this season:

Round 1 – St. Petersburg
– first hour and a half shown behind Red Button due to Malaysian Grand Prix overrunning
– Sky Sports F1
– Sunday 25th March, 19:00 to 20:30
– programme average: 21,000 (0.09%)
– peak: 34,000 (0.15%) at 19:05

Round 2 – Barber
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 1st April, 20:00
– programme average: under 30,000; outside of BARB Top 10

Round 3 – Long Beach
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 15th April, 21:00
– programme average: under 25,000; outside of BARB Top 10

Round 4 – São Paulo
– was originally meant to be shown on Sky Sports 4, but moved to Sky Sports F1 as race time was moved earlier (more here)
– Sunday 29th April, 16:30 to 19:00
– programme average: 16,000

Round 5 – Indianapolis
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 27th May, 16:30 to 21:00
– programme average: 28,000
– peak: 53,000 at 17:20

Round 6 – Detroit
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 3rd June, 20:30 to 25:00
– programme average: under 35,000; outside of BARB Top 10

Round 7 – Texas
– Sky Sports 1
– Saturday 9th June, 01:30
– programme average: ???

Round 8 – Milwaukee
– Sky Sports 3
– Saturday 16th June, 18:00 to 22:00
– programme average: 3,000 (0.01%)
– race average from 20:00 to 22:00: 4,000 (0.02%)

The above ratings are criminally low, and are in fact lower than all live content that airs on Sky Sports F1, including GP2 and GP3. With that in mind, would it not make sense to move it to Sky Sports F1 to try and boost ratings?

The current schedule for this Sunday on Sky Sports F1 is:

09:30 – LIVE: GP2 Series
10:35 – filler
11:30 – LIVE: European Grand Prix
16:15 – NEW: Legends: Mika Hakkinen
17:15 – filler
19:00 – NEW: European Grand Prix Highlights
20:30 – Legends: Mika Hakkinen (R)
21:30 – GP2 Race 2 (R)
22:35 – European Grand Prix Highlights (R)
24:05 – Legends: Mika Hakkinen (R)
25:00 – off-air

Filler’s are in the wrong place there quite frankly. The schedule, in my opinion, should go:

09:30 – LIVE: GP2 Series
10:35 – NEW: Legends: Mika Hakkinen
11:30 – LIVE: European Grand Prix
16:15 – NEW: IndyCar Series
18:15 – NEW: European Grand Prix Highlights
19:15 – Legends: Mika Hakkinen (R)
20:15 – GP3 Race 1 (R)
21:00 – GP3 Race 2 (R)
21:50 – GP2 Race 1 (R)
23:15 – GP2 Race 2 (R)
24:20 – off-air

The schedule above has nine hours back-to-back of original content without any fillers to get into the way, with the highlights show sensibly on slightly earlier to avoid a clash with Euro 2012.

For those wondering, the Legends’ series has had:

– Nigel Mansell, 18th March: 76,000 (1.03%)
– Jody Scheckter, 25th March: 49,000 (0.65%)
– Alan Jones, 22nd April: 25,000 (0.16%)
– John Surtees, 13th May: 15,000 (0.10%)

So a timeslot change for itself to earlier in between GP2 and the main Formula 1 show on Sky may actually help it. Although I suspect for such a cheap programme, ratings are not as relevant, plus they are repeated multiple times so do their job well. Back to IndyCars though, and this particular Sunday moving the Legends programme to 10:30 would open up a slot for the IndyCar Series repeat to go into at 16:15 and give it some much needed exposure on Sky Sports F1.

Because let’s face it, the IndyCar Series ratings above are not only sad, but also plain embarrassing.

The Twitter outlook

Formula 1 heads back to Europe, and in particular to Spain for the second Spanish round, known as the European Grand Prix. Hopefully everyone can stay awake for the duration… onto this week’s counters:

Drivers – The Top 10
01 – 987,338 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 861,251 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
03 – 677,392 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
04 – 432,168 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 360,767 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 214,980 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
07 – 213,528 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
08 – 166,067 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
09 – 153,862 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
10 – 140,621 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)

Drivers – Biggest Increases
01 – 28,811 – Fernando Alonso
02 – 12,147 – Lewis Hamilton
03 – 9,627 – Jenson Button
04 – 4,949 – Sergio Perez
05 – 4,889 – Bruno Senna

Drivers – Smallest Increases
01 – 365 – Charles Pic
02 – 527 – Jean-Eric Vergne
03 – 785 – Daniel Ricciardo
04 – 916 – Timo Glock
05 – 940 – Nico Hulkenberg

Hamilton and Perez get their benefits from their respective Canadian performances, with Perez recording one of the biggest increases of the week. As usual though, it is Fernando Alonso out in front. All of the five smallest increases are under one thousand followers, with both Marussia’s, Toro Rosso’s and the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg occupying the latter spots.

Teams – The Top 10
01 – 286,974 – Ferrari
02 – 199,938 – McLaren
03 – 132,345 – Mercedes
04 – 122,789 – Red Bull
05 – 112,647 – Lotus
06 – 76,827 – Caterham
07 – 67,316 – Marussia
08 – 66,527 – Williams
09 – 66,299 – Force India
10 – 58,834 – Sauber

Teams – Biggest Increases
01 – 3,101 – Ferrari
02 – 2,088 – Red Bull
03 – 1,865 – McLaren

Teams – Smallest Increases
01 – 326 – Williams
02 – 463 – Force India
03 – 552 – Toro Rosso

I did the statistics on Monday, as I usually do, but since then, McLaren have broken the 200 thousand follower barrier. As I type this, they have 200,154 followers, joining Ferrari in the over 200 thousand club. For the second time in three weeks though, it is Williams that recorded the smallest increase, recording an increase of only 326 followers since last Monday. Ouch.

Driver and Team statistics as of Monday 18th June 2012.

24 Hours of Le Mans performs well as MotoGP and IndyCar ratings plunge

The 24 Hours of Le Mans performed in line with 2011 over the week, overnight television ratings show as MotoGP and IndyCar Series ratings dropped significantly here in the UK.

The endurance event, screened on British Eurosport and British Eurosport 2, averaged a solid 49,000 viewers, marginally up on the 47,000 average it had in 2011. The peak for 2011 was higher though than this year, with a peak of 162,000 at the end of the race. Unsurprisingly, the race had a higher viewership than in the opening few hours, tailing off in the night as you would expect, before increasing on Sunday morning, but to a lower number than in 2011, due to the race all but decided by that point this year.

24 Hours of Le Mans – 2011 vs 2012
13:45 to 19:30 – 46,000 vs 77,000
19:30 to 02:00 – 45,000 vs 39,000
02:00 to 09:00 – 16,000 vs 16,000
09:00 to 14:15 – 97,000 vs 76,000

As the breakdown shows, last year’s race was benefited by the battle between Audi and Peugeot for the victory which went down to the final hour, whereas this year it was pretty clear late on Saturday night after Anthony Davidson’s crash that it would be an Audi whitewash (even if they nearly did mess it up nearly on Sunday morning!).

Despite being up against the 24 Hours of Le Mans both years, the MotoGP from Silverstone on BBC Two found it’s ratings slashed year-on-year. Airing from 12:30 to 14:30 in both 2011 and 2012, the race averaged 1.76 million, with a 15.3 percent share for the programme. That compares with 882,000 viewers and a 10.0 percent share this year, a fairly significant drop year-on-year, even if it did win its slot. The race itself from 13:00 to 13:45 this past Sunday averaged 1.07 million viewers, which is still a big drop on the 2011 average. Eurosport’s coverage of the Moto2 and Moto3 races had 105,000 and 85,000 viewers respectively.

The biggest ouch, however, comes from the IndyCar Series’ IndyFest race on Saturday night. Between 18:00 and 22:00 on Saturday night, Sky Sports 3 averaged three thousand viewers, with the race itself from 20:00 averaging four thousand viewers, equating to a 0.02 percent share. That’s the lowest IndyCar Series rating that I have come across, and especially considering the primetime slot, an incredibly poor rating. You could argue it went against the football and Le Mans, but even so, no live sport should be averaging three thousand viewers unless there are extraordinary circumstances. Maybe it is about time that the Sky bods move it to Sky Sports F1, and give it some suitable promotion. I’ve outlined “why” multiple times on this blog, the most recent of which is here. It is a sad state of affairs when the Indianapolis 500 only gets 27,000 viewers.

As always, comments and thoughts on anything I publish and write about are welcome.

The lowest ten UK F1 ratings in the 21st century

One of the things that is interesting about looking over ratings data is seeing which races did very well and brought in the viewers… and which races, for whatever reason, didn’t do so well. There’s been a fair share of fantastic ratings since 2000 – such as the 8.8 million average recorded for the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix – but on the other hand there have been ratings on the opposite of that spectrum as outlined below:

01 – 1.80 million – 2006 French Grand Prix
02 – 1.90 million – 2006 Italian Grand Prix
03 – 2.00 million – 2006 Turkish Grand Prix
04 – 2.10 million – 2005 Belgian Grand Prix
05 – 2.11 million – 2004 Hungarian Grand Prix
06 – 2.20 million – 2006 Spanish Grand Prix
07 – 2.21 million – 2005 Italian Grand Prix
08 – 2.23 million – 2006 German Grand Prix
09 – 2.37 million – 2005 French Grand Prix
10 – 2.39 million – 2002 Belgian Grand Prix

All of the ratings above are for the full ITV F1 programme, which was about three hours even back then, similar to the preceding years and similar to the years following those above, both of which had higher ratings. Eight out of the ten ratings above are from 2005 and 2006. To put the above ratings into context, the 2000 French Grand Prix Qualifying programme had 1.91 million viewers, which shows how low some of the above races plunged.

Unfortunately for ITV, it seems that a Spaniard and German fighting it out for the Drivers’ Championship was actually worse than seeing a German run-away with the championship. All but one race in the list above had something where there was still the Drivers’ Championship up for grabs, it was only the 2002 Belgian Grand Prix in the above which was a ‘dead rubber’ race with Michael Schumacher having claimed the Drivers’ Championship many races earlier. So that very low rating, on an August Bank Holiday weekend as well, may not be too surprising.

Italy and Hungary's UK TV ratings from 2000 to 2011 — Italy and Hungary’s UK TV ratings from 2000 to 2011.

The fact that five out of the ten races in that list are from 2006 interests me though. Was no battle really better than a Spanish versus German battle? I guess one thing worth considering is the lack of British drivers’ fighting it out at the front in 2005 and 2006. David Coulthard had moved to Red Bull and out of a championship winning team, while Jenson Button was collecting good results, but never really threatening for a win, aside from his win at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix (even that failed to deliver ratings wise, an average of 2.50 million was all it could muster – probably showing how much the sport had declined in popularity in the country).

Aside from what I’ve mentioned above, there is the 2004 Hungarian Grand Prix on the list with 2.11 million. Which is of little surprise to me, it was held in the middle of Summer and it was by far one of the most boring races I have ever sat through. Looking at the ratings above, it’s not difficult to see why Formula 1’s popularity was at an all time low in the UK in the mid 2000’s.

Around this time period, Qualifying sessions hovered around the 1 million mark. The lowest live European-zone Qualifying session that I have is the 2005 Bahrain Grand Prix which had a very low 900k.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 10th June, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 924k – Live Canadian Grand Prix (Sunday, 17:30)
2 – 483k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Qualifying (Saturday, 17:00)
3 – 173k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Practice 3 (Saturday, 14:45)
4 – 126k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Practice 2 (Friday, 18:45)
5 – 109k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Practice 1 (Friday, 14:45)
6 – 98k – F1 Legends (Saturday, 16:12)
7 – 58k – The F1 Show (Saturday, 19:45)
8 – 56k – The F1 Show (Friday, 23:00)
9 – 54k – Canadian Grand Prix: Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 20:45)
10 – 52k – F1 Legends (Saturday, 16:30)

The ratings above are where I would expect them to be, although maybe slightly lower. If you’re to compare it with the Bahrain weekend, the last exclusive race on Sky Sports F1, the ratings are around the same region, with all sessions above 100 thousand viewers.

One oddity is that the Saturday repeat of The F1 Show after Qualifying had a higher rating than the original Friday airing, which is somewhat odd.

The channel reach though for the week though is pleasing for Sky. The channel reached 3.27 million people, higher than Sky Sports 2, 3 and 4. That number, however, is lower than the channel reach for the Australian, Malaysian and Bahrain race weekends, which were the other Sky exclusive weekends this season.

The race day viewership of 974 thousand confirms my original post here that the Canadian Grand Prix race ratings did indeed hit a six year low, with a combined viewership of only 3.24 million viewers. It’s also the lowest viewership for a Grand Prix since the 2008 European Grand Prix, which had 2.64 million viewers.