Formula 1 has today unveiled its first-ever strategic plan, giving fans an insight on what the future holds for the series ahead of its 70th year.
The slide deck builds upon what Liberty Media have achieved during their first three years as guardians of the sport.
The plan, released as part of F1’s Corporate Strategy, covers all aspects of the sport at a high level, broken into six pillars:
- Race
- Engage
- Perform
- Sustain
- Collaborate
- Empower
On the broadcasting side, Formula 1 makes it clear the direction that the sport is heading in, with a strong focus on bringing in younger fans through an expansion of F1’s Esports Championship, and through engaging with influencers.
F1 also references ‘exciting new formats’ on the sporting side, but does not offer any specifics on what this would entail. An attempt to bring in reverse-grid qualifying races for three races in 2020 failed to gain the required approval of all F1’s teams.
Interestingly, the slide deck makes no reference to free-to-air or pay television. Instead, the sport says it will ‘reach the broadest audience on relevant linear and digital platforms,’ suggesting that the distribution model will remain different on a country-by-country basis moving forward.
As anticipated, F1 intends to grow their over-the-top platform to, in their words, ‘super-serve hardcore fans.’ Over-the-top is not new, or a surprise, but it is fascinating to see F1 reference this in a public-facing document, something that was unthinkable five years ago.
Elsewhere, F1 mentions the desire to ‘multi-feed’ through a ‘more cloud-based sports broadcasting platform, showing where they see the future to be from an innovation perspective. 5G gets a mention in the slide-deck, with F1 hoping that will enable a ‘hyper-connected car, fan and paddock.’
Sustainability is a key theme throughout the slide deck, with F1 wanting to ‘minimise the amount of equipment and people sent to each race,’ building their facility further at Biggin Hill to support in this mission.
Other key areas on the broadcasting front include sharing content and talent, as well as generally increasing the awareness of Formula 1 through promotional opportunities.
F1 does not offer any timescales on the period that the Strategic Plan covers, but given some of the ambitions that the sport covers, I suspect it covers the next five years, with a view to look beyond that in many of the areas.
At the start of the month, F1 unveiled an amended logo to celebrate 70 years of F1, with activities planned throughout the year to celebrate the milestone.
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Any paragraph with “5G” in you can just ignore as marketing bullshit. No need to report it 🙂
My God – an amended logo. When you see that you know it’s doomed.
That headline font – argh.
A quick check reveals they didn’t miss one buzz word or phrase in this latest press release. I don’t think we’ll see much of this go beyond talk, because the one promise we’ll all like to see is missing. That promise “You won’t miss any of the on-track action”. If FOM continue to believe watching the reaction of pit crew and spectators isn’t killing the race broadcasts, they’re going to keep on losing viewers.
I’m absolutely convinced Ross Brawn has never watched a live race as we see it at home. Perhaps Brawn’s years of watching the race from the pit wall has altered his perception of how to follow a race when you’re not directly involved in running a team and watching a timing screen.
Do FOM think F1 is at all watchable on an iPhone/iPad? Unless you want become completely boss eyed the bigger the screen the better and that returns to Dave’s question about FTA/pay TV (which in the UK has effectively shrunk the ‘TV’ audience).
What constitutes a ‘relevant linear’ platform?