A third of people watching Sky’s Formula 1 coverage believe that it is better than BBC’s Formula 1 coverage, however, almost 40 percent believe that the coverage Sky offer is worser than their rivals. That is according to an exclusive poll on The F1 Broadcasting Blog.

– 32.6 percent believe Sky coverage is better than BBC’s
– 39.1 percent believe Sky coverage is worser than BBC’s
– 52.9 percent do not have access to Sky Sports F1

The poll was conducted by visitors to this blog between Sunday 22nd July and Saturday 28th July following Sky’s move to air the German Grand Prix free to all Sky and Virgin Media customers as part of their free weekend. 48 people did Question 1, 49 people did Question 4 and 46 people did Question 5, so a relatively large sample size considering the blog has been going for just over three months. Question’s 2 and 3 were dependent on the responses to Question 1. Question 3 had the exact amount of respondents based on the answer to Question 1, however Question 2 had four more than those that answered Question 1. If you’re confused reading that, it should become clearer later.

The first three questions focussed on the platform choice and how they currently watch Sky Sports F1. Question 1 asked readers’ what platform they currently have, with a choice of “Sky”, “Virgin Media” or “Neither”. Unsurprisingly, Sky was the overwhelming winner here, with 54.2% of the 48 respondents having Sky. Virgin Media and the Neither choice were joint in second, both with 22.9% or 11 out of 48. So at the moment, we’ve found out least 22.9% of people cannot watch Sky Sports F1. That number is set to increase, when we see the responses to Question 2 and 3.

Question’s 2 and 3 were tailored specifically at Sky and Virgin Media, with Question 2 only for Sky customers and Question 3 only for Virgin Media customers. While the Virgin Media question had exactly 11 responses, the Sky question had 30 responses. The problem here is that number is 4 more than the 26 out of 48 people that claimed that had Sky at the end of Question 1. Discrepancy? Possibly. Given that the Virgin Media numbers are 100% accurate, I can only assume that four of the people that voted Neither on Question 1 voted on Question 2 when they shouldn’t have. I could randomly remove 4 votes from the poll, but I don’t particularly want to adjust the poll, so I shall take the results at face value, with the sample size of 30 people for the Sky question.

In question’s 2 and 3, 22 out of 30 people said that they already pay for Sky Sports F1, which worked out at 73.3%. This compares directly with only 27.3% (or 3 out of 11 responses) in the Virgin Media question who say they already pay for Sky Sports F1. The difference here is staggering. There is one reason for this in my view, and that is that with Sky you can get Sky Sports F1 via two methods. Either via the Sports pack or via the HD pack. With Virgin Media, however, you can only have the channel by subscribing to all four Sky Sports channels, hence in my view why there is such a large difference in the two numbers. If we merge the Question 2 and 3 responses, we see that 25 out of 41 people, or 61.0% of people with Sky or Virgin Media already pay for Sky Sports F1. If we then work out 61.0% of 37 people from Question 1, we get 22.6 people. Which, if we then look at the 48 total responses, we see that 47.1% of people that conducted the poll already pay for Sky Sports F1. Or, to put it another way, over half of people survey do not have access to Sky Sports F1. Considering this is an F1 blog, that is an extremely large number in my opinion and shows how the deal made last year even prices the most hardcore fans out of watching Formula 1.

For the German Grand Prix, though, with Sky’s free weekend, 77.1% of the people surveyed had access to Sky Sports F1, a difference of over 60%. Going back to Question 2 and 3 though, only 2 out of the 41 total responses said that they would upgrade, or 4.9%. In contrast, 14 out of 41 or over a third, said that they had no intention of upgrading having watched Sky’s German Grand Prix coverage.

Question’s 4 and 5 I will treat independently to Question’s 1, 2 and 3 above. Although I intended for it to be about the German Grand Prix coverage, it is possible that some voted looking at their overall coverage, which is fair enough. Question 4 asked for people’s views on Sky’s coverage, from “Excellent” to “Poor” to “Didn’t watch”. In Question 4, 7 out of the 49 responses said that did not watch Sky Sports F1’s coverage, or 14.3%. Stripping out those 7 responses for the other five parts of Question 4, and we see over 60 percent value Sky Sports F1’s coverage as either Excellent or Very Good. 28.6% voted Excellent, 33.3% voted Very Good out of the 42 responses. 8 out of the 42 (or 19.0%) said the coverage was Good, while 18.0% said the coverage was Fair or Poor.

Question 5 asked people what they thought of Sky’s coverage in comparison with BBC’s Formula 1 coverage. There were three options here “Better”, “No Difference” or “Poorer”. This had mixed results, with clearly a difference of opinion between voters. 15 out of the 46 voters, or 32.6%, believed that the coverage Sky offered was better than BBC’s coverage. 13 voters, or 28.3%, said that there was no difference between Sky’s and BBC’s coverage, while nearly 40% said that Sky’s coverage was poorer than BBC’s Formula 1 coverage. So while there is a high level of praise for Sky Sports F1’s coverage, as seen in Question 4, there is a substantial amount of people that believe the coverage is worser than that offered by BBC last year.

Below is the poll results, in full:

Question 1 – What platform do you have?
26 votes – 54.2% – Sky
11 votes – 22.9% – Virgin Media
11 votes – 22.9% – Neither
=> TOTAL = 48 votes

Question 2 – Sky customers only
22 votes – 73.3% – I have Sky and already pay for Sky Sports F1.
01 votes – 03.3% – I have Sky and am planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
07 votes – 23.3% – I have Sky and am not planning to upgrade.
=> TOTAL = 30 votes

Question 3 – Virgin Media customers only
03 votes – 27.3% – I have Virgin Media and already pay for Sky Sports F1.
01 votes – 09.1% – I have Virgin Media and am planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
07 votes – 63.6% – I have Virgin Media and am not planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
=> TOTAL = 11 votes

Question 2 and 3 – Sky and Virgin Media customers combined
25 votes – 61.0% – I already pay for Sky Sports F1.
02 votes – 04.9% – I am planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
14 votes – 34.1% – I am not planning to upgrade.
=> TOTAL = 41 votes

Question 1, 2 and 3 combined
22.6 votes – 47.1% – I already pay for Sky Sports F1.*
14.4 votes – 30.0% – I do not pay for Sky Sports F1.** [Sky and Virgin Media customers]
11.0 votes – 22.9% – I do not pay for Sky Sports F1. [Neither]
=> TOTAL = 48 votes
* worked out from 25 divided by 41 in Q2 and Q3 above multiplied by 37 from Q1 above
** worked out from 16 (2+14) divided by 41 in Q2 and Q3 above multiplied by 37 from Q1 above

Question 4 – How do you rate Sky’s German Grand Prix coverage?
12 votes – 28.6% – Excellent
14 votes – 33.3% – Very Good
08 votes – 19.0% – Good
05 votes – 11.9% – Fair
03 votes – 07.1% – Poor
07 votes – 14.3% – I have not watched Sky Sports F1 this weekend.
=> TOTAL = 49 votes

Question 5 – How do you rate Sky’s German Grand Prix coverage in comparison with BBC’s overall coverage?
15 votes – 32.6% – Sky Sports F1’s coverage was better than the BBC coverage that I have seen
13 votes – 28.3% – Sky Sports F1’s coverage was no better or worser than the BBC coverage that I have seen
18 votes – 39.1% – Sky Sports F1’s coverage was worser than the BBC coverage that I have seen
=> TOTAL = 46 votes

So, that is that. As well as the questions above, several people left comments on the blog, with a range of differing opinions. The comments open will be open on this blog as well, so I welcome your thoughts and opinions now that the poll results are out.