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.

Canadian Grand Prix: The ratings around Europe

While this blog does tend to focus on the United Kingdom television and broadcasting picture, along with the respective ratings, of course, the UK is only one small part of the puzzle. Around Europe, Formula 1 found itself overshadowed by football.

In Spain, the race had 5 million viewers, with a 33.5% viewing share on Antena 3. The figure was significantly lower than the 10 million viewers that watched Spain versus Italy, but higher than the 1.76 million that watched Ireland vs Croatia. Over in Italy, the race started on Rai 2 before switching to Rai 1 twenty-five minutes into the race. The Rai 2 portion had 5.67 million (25.7%), with the Rai 1 portion recording 7.93 million (32.4%). In comparison, Italy’s Euro 2012 game a mammoth 12.7 million, a 62.7% viewing share.

In the Netherlands, according to rating bureax Kijkonderzoek, where there are no Formula 1 drivers of course, the race had 537 thousand viewers, a 7.7% share, on RTL7. The football there recorded 4 million viewers, again with a mammoth share – this time of 65.7%. In France, looking at these comments, it appears the F1 was not actually broadcast live there last night thanks to their election coverage.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 3rd June, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 86k – The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
2 – 23k – Fast Track (Wednesday, 19:00)
3 – 13k – Monaco Grand Prix: GP2 Sprint Race Replay (Tuesday, 24:00)
4 – 13k – Fast Track (Friday, 19:30)
5 – 12k – Legends (Saturday, 18:02)
6 – 11k – The F1 Show (Friday, 22:30)
7 – 11k – 2007 Season Review: Part 3 (Sunday, 21:04)
8 – 11k – The F1 Show (Sunday, 22:22)
9 – 11k – Monaco Grand Prix Highlights (Monday, 16:30)
10 – 8k – Legends (Saturday, 18:32)

The above programmes are in random order you could say, with only the two ‘original’ programmes The F1 Show and Fast Track getting over twenty thousand viewers. The F1 Show fared well, with its highest number for a studio based programme since the debut F1 Show programme on March 9th.

For the week, the channel reached its lowest audience yet however, reaching 560 thousand people. It’s worth noting that only two programmes from Sunday make the top 10. Nothing from Sunday daytime made the top 10, in stark contrast with two weeks ago when they screened Classic F1 races to double the audience.