Month: March 2016

Thomas and Griffiths no longer part of BT’s MotoGP team

Iwan Thomas and Abi Griffiths will not be part of BT Sport’s MotoGP team for the 2016 season, it has been confirmed.

Both Thomas and Griffiths took to Twitter to announce the news:

The confirmation follows the announcement last week that Suzi Perry is joining BT’s team, presenting alongside Craig Doyle throughout the season, although she will not be on-site until Jerez.

Given the Perry news, it is not too surprising that Thomas and Griffiths are leaving the team, although somewhat disappointing in the case of the latter as I thought Griffiths grew as MotoGP presenter throughout 2015. Inevitably, there was always going to be someone being dropped somewhere down the train as a result of Formula 1 moving to Channel 4, and this appears to be where the buck has stopped.

In other MotoGP news, BT Sport’s coverage this season will be sponsored by Suzuki.

Formula 1 finally launches on Facebook

A year after Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, but better late than never: Formula 1 finally has an official page on Facebook!

The page, which has been verified by Facebook, made its first post earlier today. The launch comes fifteen months after Marissa Pace, Formula One Management’s Digital Media Manager, confirmed plans for a Facebook page. So far, the page has posted video content, including archive footage from both the 1999 and 2002 Australian Grand Prix.

It is fair to say that this has been a long time in the making. If 2015 was a big year for Formula One Management from a social media perspective, it looks like 2016 will be even bigger.

Update on March 16th at 18:40 – Facebook is in the process of migrating all the likes from the old Formula 1 fan page (which, for those familiar, would have just contained the generic Wikipedia description with no content) into the official page. As I write this, the official page has 322,795 likes. Two hours ago, that number was around 20,000 likes… it is pretty clear that Facebook are merging all the likes from the old page into the official page. The old page had 1.8 million likes, so if the official page has 1.8 million likes within the next few hours or so, we know why. I strongly doubt this is a case of FOM buying followers.

Update on March 16th at 19:50 – This is definitely Facebook transferring the likes over. The official page has jumped through the half a million barrier now as a result. You know they are real likes as well. In my case I can see that some other people I know are now liking the official version having previously liked the fan page. Also, FOM have prohibited sites from embedding videos externally, which page owners have the right to do.

 This post will be updated in forthcoming days.

Channel 4 confirms F1 ad break plan for live races

Channel 4 have today confirmed their plans for commercial breaks within their ten live race programmes. As revealed back in December, the channel will be airing their live ten races uninterrupted.

The channel has announced today that the last advert break before the race will occur “just moments before the formation lap”. In what they are calling the Pole Position break, the break will last 30 seconds, with Mercedes-Benz Cars UK the only company that will advertise in the junction following a competitive process. The remaining Podium Packages that Channel 4 are offering to advertisers will see a further 30 second ad break “just after the winner takes the chequered flag.”

The last full length commercial break will take place before the national anthem (so from around 12:42 to 12:45, or equivalent), with the first full break after the race taking place when cars are in parc fermé. That doesn’t mean that an ad break will take place when cars are in parc ferme, but the provision is there. The deal between Channel 4 and Mercedes-Benz Cars UK was brokered between Channel 4 and Fuel@VivaKi.

Although there will be people who think that going to a 30″ advertising break moments before the formation lap will break the tension before the start of the race, it is not a surprise. Unlike Sky, Channel 4’s primary income is advertising, they are not a subscription based service. It was inevitable that they would look for innovative ways to deliver advertising around the coverage. Sky do the same with their football coverage, a bet365 or SkyBet advert airs seconds before kick-off. The good news, based on the wording in the press release, is that there will not be any advertising during Safety Car periods.

Working on the assumption that Channel 4’s build-up will be on hour long and will use up their full 12 minutes of advertising in that clock hour (and no break can have more than 3 minutes 30 seconds of adverts), we are looking at something along the lines of the following:

12:00:00 to 12:10:00 – Part 1
12:10:00 to 12:13:00 – Commercial 1
=> 5 x 30″ adverts
=> 2 x 5″ sponsor
=> 1 x 20″ promo
12:13:00 to 12:20:00 – Part 2
12:20:00 to 12:23:30 – Commercial 2
=> 6 x 30″ adverts
=> 2 x 5″ sponsor
=> 1 x 20″ promo
12:23:30 to 12:30:00 – Part 3
12:30:00 to 12:33:30 – Commercial 3
=> 6 x 30″ adverts
=> 2 x 5″ sponsor
=> 1 x 20″ promo
12:33:30 to 12:42:20 – Part 4
12:42:20 to 12:45:50 – Commercial 4
=> 6 x 30″ adverts
=> 2 x 5″ sponsor
=> 1 x 20″ promo
12:45:50 to 12:59:15 – Part 5
12:59:15 to 12:59:45 – Commercial 5
=> 1 x 30″ advert
13:00:00 – Formation Lap begins

I would be surprised if Channel 4 did not use up all of its 12 minutes that it is allowed in the build-up given that there are no adverts within the race itself. An alternative is that they have one less advertising break, but make the commercial length last four minutes (including bumpers), this would mean only 11 minutes of adverts in the clock hour as opposed to 12.  We don’t know what Sky’s strategy will be this season either. Previously, when the BBC was live, they went uninterrupted without adverts but they may not be as enticed to do so this year with Channel 4 running their own commercials.

Live streaming fails to impress for inaugural Mexico City ePrix

The inaugural Mexico City ePrix peaked with 331k across live and highlights this past weekend, overnight viewing figures show. However, numbers were dented by the lack of live coverage on ITV’s portfolio of channels and failed to pick up through live streaming.

Live coverage of the Formula E race, broadcast live on BT Sport Europe on Saturday (12th March), averaged 20k (0.12%) from 21:45 to 23:30, peaking with 38k (0.21%) at 22:00. It was the first time that BT Sport had covered the series live, as ITV4 were covering the snooker World Grand Prix tournament on Saturday evening. ITV4 aired delayed coverage from 23:15, which was watched by a further 38k (0.6%), peaking with 75k (0.8%) at 23:30.

The combined ‘live’ audience of 58k and combined peak audience of 113k is significantly down on the live ITV numbers for Punta del Este and Buenos Aires. Highlights of the race, broadcast on ITV’s main channel from 09:30 to 10:25 on Sunday morning, averaged 163k (2.5%), peaking with 218k (3.3%). It is clear now that the highlights programme has settled into this region, although the Mexico programme did not see any uplift with viewers tuning in who would normally watch the live broadcast. The total combined audience is therefore 220k with a combined peak audience of 331k across the three programmes.

Elsewhere, the 2016 IndyCar Series began on BT Sport//ESPN on Sunday evening. The race, airing live from 16:30 to 19:10, averaged 15k (0.09%), peaking with 29k. If anything, that is where IndyCar tends to be in the viewing figures, so no change on that front.

Live streaming
Despite Formula E not airing live on ITV4, a jump in numbers for their live streaming did not materialise. Around 2,000 devices were watching Formula E’s live stream of the Mexico City ePrix on YouTube, with around 260 devices active on the Daily Motion stream (note: I made reference to ‘people’ as opposed to ‘devices’ on Twitter, the latter is the more correct terminology – four people could be watching one device).

Earlier on Saturday, around 3,200 devices were watching the Indy Lights race on YouTube, with 2,200 devices watching Formula E’s qualifying session. The reason Formula E’s number is higher for qualifying than the race is because the race stream would have been geo-blocked in a lot more countries than a few hours earlier. Either way, these numbers are very low and show why, for the likes of Formula E, television is still king and should not be forgotten.

It is worth emphasising that, whilst YouTube is huge, live streaming on YouTube is not, the most popular stream as I write this has 4,700 devices watching it. In comparison, over on Twitch, the top 20 streams all have over 4,700 devices watching. The most popular stream has 32,800 viewers/devices watching it as of writing. This explains, to some degree, why Formula E is trying to tap into the Twitch market as that is where the viewers are, at the moment Twitch is one of Formula E’s competitors despite the two not being in direct competition.

overnights.tv-bannersF1

Scheduling: The 2016 Qatar MotoGP

After a titanic battle between Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo last year, with Marc Marquez getting involved at the end, the 2016 MotoGP championship has a lot to live up to. Unusually, the action gets underway on the same day as the start of the Formula One season in Australia, the first time that has happened since 1995 – back then it was Formula One in Brazil and MotoGP in Eastern Creek, Australia.

The main news over the Winter is that Suzi Perry will be part of BT Sport’s MotoGP team for the 2016 season, presenting alongside Craig Doyle. Perry last presented MotoGP in 2009 with the BBC. Presenting duties have since travelled past Jennie Gow, Matt Roberts, Melanie Sykes and more recently the aforementioned Doyle. Perry and Doyle will be joined by Keith Huewen and Julian Ryder, now in their third season as commentators on BT Sport.

BT Sport’s 2016 coverage kicks off with a preview show live on Thursday afternoon from Qatar. Doyle presents the programme, with regular MotoGP faces Gavin Emmett and Neil Hodgson alongside him. BT’s post-race show, The Chequered Flag returns for a second year. Notably, in the past few days, Iwan Thomas has been removed from the description for that show. I don’t know his or Abi Griffiths’ status with regards to BT’s MotoGP coverage this year, but I will update this site if we get any updates on that front.

As has been the case since this deal came into effect, ITV4 will again be screening highlights every Monday after a race weekend which is good news for those of you that do not have access to BT Sport. BT Sport reaped the rewards of a fantastic MotoGP season last year, and they will be hoping that viewing figures continue to increase as year three of their coverage gets underway. In the next few days,

MotoGP – Qatar (BT Sport 2)
17/03 – 14:00 to 15:00 – Preview
17/03 – 15:00 to 19:45 – Practice
18/03 – 14:45 to 19:00 – Practice
19/03 – 14:30 to 18:30 – Qualifying
20/03 – 14:45 to 19:00 – Races
=> 14:45 – Moto3
=> 16:15 – Moto2
=> 17:45 – MotoGP
20/03 – 19:00 to 20:00 – Chequered Flag

MotoGP – Qatar (BT Sport Xtra)
20/03 – 12:45 to 14:45 – Warm Up

MotoGP – Qatar (ITV4)
21/03 – 20:00 to 21:00 – Highlights

As always, if anything changes, I will update the schedule.

Update on March 16th – Perry has confirmed that she will not be in Qatar. Her first appearance with the BT team will be in Jerez. Furthermore, both Thomas and Griffiths are no longer part of BT’s team.