Month: September 2012

Italian Grand Prix records highest rating since 1998

In a season where Formula 1’s television ratings are topsy-turvy, with only large gains and large falls seemingly on the agenda, both BBC and Sky will be pleased to know that the Italian Grand Prix falls into the former category. The race, won by Lewis Hamilton, recorded the highest rating since 1998. BBC One’s highlights programme at 17:35 averaged 3.57 million viewers (21% share), with Sky Sports F1’s live broadcast from 11:30 to 16:05 averaging a further 650,000 viewers (7.3% share), bringing the total to 4.22 million viewers. In 1998, the Grand Prix had 4.65 million viewers as viewers took to the Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher title feud massively in that year. Since then, Italy has always been under 4 million, until last year when it had 4.17 million viewers. The short length does not really help it, after all I am looking at the programme averages with all the above figures. The reason it is the highest since 1998 I think falls down to several reasons.

The first one is that the Grand Prix is ‘made’ for highlights. That quote comes from Jake Humphrey, and although I disagree with the quote in principle (as I think that there really is nothing better than seeing it live), from a broadcasting perspective I can see where he is coming from. The Italian Grand Prix, traditionally is the shortest on the calendar which means that you don’t have to make many edits when it comes to the highlights show, compared to say with the European Grand Prix – Italy lasted 80 minutes, whereas Valencia back in June averaged 105 minutes. Fitting the latter in a 90 minute primetime slot would be difficult, normally it wouldn’t be, but I think most reading this would appreciate that Valencia was probably one of the best races of the season so far.

Secondly, there was not much competition around yesterday aside from the Paralympics, which would have helped both the highlights and the live shows as there was no Live Ford Super Sunday to go up against on Sky Sports 1. As I demonstrated last weekend, the football can take a chunk out of the Formula 1. Saying that I did expect Sky Sports F1’s figure to be slightly higher than 650,000, but the warm weather may have knocked a few viewers off it. The final reason is probably Eddie Jordan. Not specifically him, but his leak last Wednesday. Some may not agree with me here, but it does Formula 1 no good when it is out of the headlines for several weeks, hence why we had a low rating from Belgium. Maybe the BBC seen that and had Jordan leak information to bring Formula 1 back in the headlines and the viewers back to the sport. I know, it seems a little convenient the timing, but it’s just a thought as there was nothing Formula 1 related in the press over the Summer and no one had moved anywhere – surprisingly.

Qualifying had 2.1 million viewers (a 16.7% share) on BBC One, Sky Sports F1 had under 470,000 viewers, so it looks like Qualifying was down on last year’s 2.80 million viewers, but in line with the 2.47 million viewers recorded in 2010.

2012 ratings are sourced from the ITV Media website.

Why Luca di Montezemolo’s ideas may not be farfetched

Like Eddie Jordan recently, Luca di Montezemolo, the president of Ferrari, is another personality within the Formula 1 paddock who likes to make suggestions that generate a lot of discussion. Today, he has made a few statements on the subject of broadcasting, believing that races should be shortened and that the time of races in Europe should be changed to bring in a bigger audience.

This is not the first time Montezemolo has made statements that tend to raise eyebrows, I’m sure readers of this blog may remember statements from Montzemolo in the past concerning teams running three cars, a completely mad idea in my opinion as that just shrinks the opportunities out there for smaller teams.

Regarding the statements Montezemolo has made today, I don’t think they are as farfetched as first thought – one I agree with, and one I completely disagree with. Commenting on the length of the races, Montezemolo says that the length is “too long for young people”. I don’t quite see this argument, myself, and actually see it as dumbing down if races were introduced, or if we moved ‘the show’ to two shorter races, more akin to GP2 and GP3. Formula 1 has tradionally been about one race per weekend, to have anything other than that just shouts out gimmicky to me and unnecessary. Are we going to suddenly change football lengths to 30 minutes in three halves because young people don’t have a long enough attention span? I mean, just focussing on the attention span for a second, outside of sport are we going to argue that an exam at school of two hours long must have a 15 minute gap in the middle otherwise they will lose concentration? Personally, and I’ve been watching Formula 1 since I was seven, I’ve found the length just fine. It is not too long, but there is enough action to keep me focussed. The length of the races might have been perceived as a problem in the mid 2000’s when there was more action off the track compared to on it, but nowadays with DRS, Pirelli and KERS, the length is fine. You could argue “BTCC has three races a day, so why doesn’t F1 have two?”. I guess that is an interesting argument to go down, but the BTCC event programme has a lot more races on a typical day than Formula 1. Formula 1 has F1, GP2, GP3 and Porsche Supercup, whereas a typical BTCC event programme has BTCC, Clio Cup, Carrera Cup, Ginettta Juniors and Ginetta Supercup.

Bringing the viewing figures perspective into it, and it is difficult to analyse whether Formula 1 would benefit from having two races. How would it be tailored on television? Obviously Sky would screen it all, but would you get a situation where BBC screen one race live and another before the second race if one race is perceived more important than the other, or in a more valuable television slot? If both races were ‘wrapped around’ something else, what would the ‘something else’ be? I say above it is difficult to analyse viewing figures in this case, the trends I tend to see looking at the breakdowns is that the audience can decrease slightly after the first 10 minutes before rising before the end, but not every breakdown of the viewing figures is the same, for example a breakdown where you have British drivers leading at the front differs massively to one where Button and Hamilton go out at the first bend, for example. Personally, I just don’t want to see the pinnicle of motor sport bastardised to suit a small proportion of the audience, but that’s just me. Looking at a demographic breakdown of last year’s Canadian Grand Prix, 6 percent of the audience came from the 4 to 15 demographic, while 20 percent came from the 16 to 34 age demographic.

Whlist I disagree with di Montezemolo on the two races subject, I do think he has a point with regards how races are scheduled, and what time of day they take place in. I’ve commented a few times on this blog how mind boggling some of the scheduling decisions have been: the FIA have successfully managed to put Formula 1 in direct clashes with Euro 2012, Wimbledon and the Olympics. I know it is difficult to avoid other sporting events, but this is idiocy at its finest, and those that dictate the schedule need to consider other major worldwide events before plotting the schedule together instead of taking a self-centered view. Putting that to one side, Formula 1 traditionally does better when in primetime to viewers in Europe, it is that exact reason why Bernie Ecclestone wants the Brazilian Grand Prix at the end of the calendar, because having the title decider played out in front of primetime all over Europe is music to his ears (hence why a record 13 million viewers in the UK watched Lewis Hamilton win the championship in 2008). According to Initiative Sports Futures for 2005 onwards, the most watched Formula 1 races worldwide on average are:

– 2005 – 51 million viewers – Canadian Grand Prix
– 2006 – 83 million viewers – Brazilian Grand Prix
– 2007 – 78 million viewers – Brazilian Grand Prix
– 2008 – 78 million viewers – Brazilian Grand Prix
– 2009 – 54 million viewers – Bahrain Grand Prix

Those figures are not particularly surprising, as in all three of those seasons, Brazil was the title decider, hence why it was higher than 2005 and 2009. The point remains though, that Formula 1 gets higher viewing figures in primetime compared with other timezones, simply because there are more viewers available. Is that to say every race should be in primetime? No, because that is completely unrealistic. BBC, or any other broadcaster would probably point blank simply refuse to have Formula 1 on 20 Sunday evenings in primetime, after all BBC (and other broadcasters’ around Europe) have to cater for all audiences. There is no guarantee that you are going to have competitive seasons every year, if you had someone ‘run away’, you’ve then got a lot of dud races on in primetime which don’t make for good viewing. Let’s take a look at the sunset times for the ‘European based races’, I know its rather pedantic, but just to see if di Montezemolo has a point:

– Spain (Barcelona – May 13th) – 21:02
– Monaco (Monte Carlo – May 27th) – 21:01
– Europe (Valencia – June 24th) – 21:33
– Britain (Silverstone – July 8th) – 21:24 UK/22:24 Europe
– Germany (Hockenheim – July 22nd) – 21:19
– Hungary (Budapest – July 29th) – 20:22
– Belgium (Spa – September 2nd) – 20:18
– Italy (Monza – September 9th) – 19:45

All times above are local time, except for Britain, which I’ve noted the +1 hour time as well to equalise it with other countries. The races finish, at most, at 16:00. Yet there are at least three hours of sunlight left for most of the races. So surely, that alone is an argument for moving all European based races from 13:00 UK/14:00 European time to 16:00 UK/17:00 European time, thus bringing them into European primetime? Now of course, there are risks, the obvious one being weather related, if a race was red flagged, that would be it, game over, whereas presently you can complete the race in daytime hours. The evidence above though suggests it is definitely in the realms of possibility that at some point in the next few years, Formula 1 races could be moved into more of a mid-afternoon slot to boost television audiences. Myself? I am not sure it would boost television audiences, many countries around Europe have football mid-afternoon, in the UK, a 16:00 start would put it head to head with Sky’s Ford Super Sunday which would take off a million or so viewers. I know that the purists may not like a change in start-time and like the standard timeslot across all races, but from FOM’s perspective, I am surprised this was not considered years ago. I was one of the few that liked the Australia change in time, until 2009 I did not watch Australia live! Moving the European based races to a later slot, is it worth considering? Absolutely.

The source for 2005, 2006 and 2007 ratings come from this post on AUTOSPORT Forum. 2008 and 2009 ratings come from this document released by Initiative Sport Futures. Sunset times are via timeanddate.com for the race date this year.

Eddie Jordan’s credibility

Lewis Hamilton will be moving to Mercedes in 2013, replacing Michael Schumacher. That, is not according to me, that, is according to Eddie Jordan on the BBC Sport website. Those three words, “according to Eddie Jordan” seems enough for the majority of people to completely dispel the story.

There are two particular stories that I recall where Jordan predicted something, one turned out to be true, whilst the other was made at the wrong place, and the wrong time. The first was in the immediate aftermath of Felipe Massa’s crash at the Qualifying session for the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix. At the time his condition was unknown, and Jordan, live on air on BBC One made some fairly speculative and inaccurate comments. Jake Humphrey very quickly had to remind viewers that nothing concrete was known and that they had received no information on his condition.

The second prediction – and one more akin to the article today – concerns Michael Schumacher’s return to Mercedes following his botched return to Ferrari earlier in 2009. On November 20th, 2009, BBC put an article up on their website, which notes that Jordan believes (either himself, or he has ‘sources’ so to say within the Mercedes team) that Schumacher will return to Formula 1 with Mercedes. Interestingly, the article contains a denial from Sabine Kehm, Schumacher’s spokeswoman, who said that it is “highly unlikely – but never say never”. Just over a month later, however, the deal was confirmed.

Now, in relation to today’s story, McLaren have responded by saying “we have been told by Lewis Hamilton’s management team that the story is untrue”. Given how quick they have responded, after all the article went up less than two hours ago, it suggests that they were expecting this. Nevertheless, I’m not sure what we learn from that quote? I mean, Hamilton’s management team are not going to openly admit that the article is true, it is standard practice to slam it down, like with what Kehm did back in 2009. I’m not sure if McLaren would admit either if they expect Hamilton to exit the team, even if Hamilton’s management team say otherwise.

Either way, it is my opinion that the article put up by BBC today should not be dismissed, just because it is Eddie Jordan’s thoughts, opinions or sources. Will Hamilton join Mercedes? Time, shall tell…

The Twitter outlook

After a frantic – and quite scary at times – Belgian Grand Prix weekend, the Formula 1 roller-coaster moves onto Italy for the Italian Grand Prix. If you were on Twitter over the weekend, you would have probably noticed one particular drivers’ tweets appear, and then disappear. Well, that has helped that driver jump over 1 million followers, in a week where a lot of records for this particular blog series went tumbling down.

Drivers – The Top 10
01 – 1,103,800 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 1,036,876 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
03 – 1,028,627 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
04 – 477,923 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 424,236 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 257,627 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
07 – 254,819 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
08 – 191,254 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
09 – 172,677 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
10 – 169,882 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)

Drivers – Biggest Increases
01 – 50,110 – Fernando Alonso
02 – 45,223 – Lewis Hamilton
03 – 21,180 – Jenson Button
04 – 7,620 – Mark Webber
05 – 7,298 – Felipe Massa

Drivers – Smallest Increases
01 – 712 – Charles Pic
02 – 936 – Jean-Eric Vergne
03 – 1,011 – Timo Glock
04 – 1,694 – Daniel Ricciardo
05 – 1,894 – Kamui Kobayashi

Last week I predicted Fernando Alonso would jump to over one million followers. That has happened. What I didn’t predict is that Lewis Hamilton would join him. The reason I didn’t predict that is because of this:

A comparison of the amount of Twitter followers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton have gained per week between April 2012 and September 2012.

The graph above shows that this past week’s gain by Hamilton is his largest yet since I started doing this blog by a considerable margin, his previous highest was thanks to his victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix. Irrespective of whether his tweets this past weekend were right or wrong, it seems to have done him well in the Twitter stakes, that is for sure, pushing him above one million followers earlier than I anticipated. It now leaves a somewhat bizarre situation in that we have three drivers’ over one million followers, and then a large gap, with no one between 500,000 and one million! Further down, Felipe Massa’s large gain (by his standards) has moved him ahead of Paul di Resta.

Teams – The Top 10
01 – 327,583 – Ferrari
02 – 225,546 – McLaren
03 – 150,131 – Red Bull
04 – 144,598 – Mercedes
05 – 131,426 – Lotus
06 – 84,716 – Caterham
07 – 78,729 – Marussia
08 – 74,874 – Force India
09 – 73,461 – Williams
10 – 71,618 – Sauber

Teams – Biggest Increases
01 – 8,282 – Ferrari
02 – 4,563 – McLaren
03 – 3,599 – Red Bull

Teams – Smallest Increases
01 – 826 – Williams
02 – 910 – Toro Rosso
03 – 1,053 – Caterham

A huge team gain by Ferrari extends their gap at the front, and is also a record high gain for them since I started this series of blog posts.

Driver and Team statistics as of Monday 3rd September 2012.

Belgian Grand Prix slumps to five year ratings low

Formula 1’s difficult Summer ratings wise continued as the Belgian Grand Prix recorded the lowest rating for a Grand Prix race since the 2008 season. In terms of averages, from 12:10 to 15:15, BBC averaged 2.77 million viewers, a low 24 percent share of the total audience, while from 11:00 to 16:15, Sky Sports F1 averaged a very low 335,000 viewers. I’ll deal with the Sky Sports average first for those thinking that the low average is due to the long build-up.

For example purposes, assume the 11:00 to 11:30 portion averaged 50,000, which seems a reasonable number. That would mean that from 11:30 to 16:15, Sky Sports F1 averaged 360,000 viewers. That, along with BBC’s 2.77 million viewers averages 3.13 million viewers, which is still a low for the season so far. Using the 35.1 percent theory, then from 12:10 to 15:15, Sky Sports F1 averaged 486,000 viewers. Add that to the 2.77 million for BBC F1 and you get 3.26 million viewers. For the purposes of tracking the ratings in my spreadsheet, I will use the 3.10 million figure which comes from adding 2.77 million and 335,000 together, but in contrast to previous years for the Belgian Grand Prix:

– 2007: 2.56 million
– 2008: 3.68 million
– 2009: 3.38 million
– 2010: 4.08 million
– 2011: 3.76 million
– 2012: 3.26 million (direct comparison)/3.10 million (full programmes)

I know the above paragraph to some may seem tedious, but I am just putting the facts out there that, no matter which way you look at the ratings, that there is a drop in comparison to previous years. It is an undeniable fact that, irrespective of how you use the programme averages, that the Belgian Grand Prix average was the lowest since 2007. The peak yesterday of 4.58 million was the lowest since 2009, 2010 and 2011 both recorded peaks of over 5 million while 2009 had a peak of just under 4.5 million. That doesn’t mean 2009 did worse, arguably 2009 did better than yesterday, 2009 – as have all previous years – been on Bank Holiday weekends whereas yesterday was not, and if you remember both Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton went out on lap 1 in 2009, no doubt removing some of the casual interest. The peak splits down as 3.69 million on BBC One and 889,000 on Sky Sports F1, which is a split of 80.6% versus 19.4%. That is closer than previous splits, the previous peak splits having been around 84% versus 16%.

As a comparison, the 3.13 million viewers that I have quoted in the second paragraph would make the Belgian Grand Prix the lowest rating Formula 1 race since the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix, while the 3.10 million viewer number would take you back to the 2008 European Grand Prix.

One factor for the low rating yesterday was tougher competition, firstly from the Paralympic Games. Normally, Channel 4 on a Sunday afternoon would probably struggle to get over 500,000 viewers, whereas yesterday it probably had three times that number, although I have seen no specifics regarding their afternoon average. Another factor, ironically has to be the football on Sky Sports 1. The first game, Liverpool vs Arsenal, from 13:00 to 15:30, averaged 1.33 million viewers in that time period.

So while the ratings were down, it is not a case of “it’s because of the new deal”, it is simply an unusual case of where there were two other big sporting occasions clashing with the Formula 1 which hurt it’s overall rating. That seems to be the situation constantly throughout the season so far, doesn’t it?