UK F1 viewing figures record slight year-on-year drop

Lewis Hamilton’s championship victory may have brought joy to both BBC and Sky Sports F1’s ratings in the latter half of the season but despite this, viewing figures are down year-on-year according to unofficial overnight viewing figures. Whereas 2013’s figures dropped sharply after the Summer break, the 2014 season has seen the opposite occur.

> BBC average figures drop year-on-year
> Sky record highest figures since channel launch
> Numbers still down on 2009-11 figures

As always, for those that are new to the blog, it is best stating what figures we are comparing here. For Sky Sports F1, all the viewing figures are for the three and a half hour race day slot: one hour before the race and approximately 45 minutes after the race. I have used the equivalent slots for 2012 and 2013 to present a fair and complete picture, there would be little use in presenting a skewed picture, so all data is for the equivalent timeslots. Over on BBC, I have used their programme averages, whether it be live or highlights, irrespective of whether the highlights were shown on BBC One or BBC Two, as was the case for Bahrain and Austria this year. Repeats are taken into account for Asian-based races that the BBC showed live. As always, viewing figures are for TV only. iPlayer, Sky Go and the such like are not included.

The 2014 story
It is worth a reminder that, in my Summer post, I stated that the UK’s audience for Formula 1 had “dropped to their lowest level since 2008.” Luckily, that has not happened. Thanks to a British driver winning the championship, numbers have increased. Crucially though, have numbers increased as much as expected, and has the scheduling hit the numbers badly?

Sky Sports F1’s race day programme has averaged 790k from 12:00 to 15:30, or equivalent across 2014. That number is up a massive 23.4 percent on 2013’s figure of 640k and up 11.1 percent on 2012’s figure of 711k. Whichever way you spin that, for Sky, those are very positive numbers. Things were not looking good for Sky during 2013 with numbers falling, but this year, they have turned it around, and then some more, to record an average higher than both 2012 and 2013. Back in the Summer, I was taking about a “meagre 22k.” The numbers bandied around above are much bigger than 22k, and in my opinion is definitely something worth recognising.

So, why the increase? Better picks? Absolutely. Having both USA and Brazil exclusively during the title run in would have done the average wonders. But even then, it is more than just that. In fact, 14 out of 16 races recorded increases between 2013 and 2014 on Sky Sports F1 (the other four didn’t take place), so even the races where Sky shared coverage with BBC did the numbers increase. That suggests to me that viewers are liking the product that Sky are putting out, otherwise they would not be tuning in to their pre and post-race shows. The substantial increase correlates with feedback on this blog to suggest that people are liking Sky’s race day show more than previously. Sky’s figures are no fluke, in my opinion.

The BBC’s figures dropped year-on-year by 5.9 percent, recording an average of 3.22m versus 3.42m in 2013. Numbers are up slightly on 2012’s average of 3.21m, although those two numbers are within the margin of error to be statistically insignificant. Scheduling was not great. Bahrain and Austria were both screened on BBC Two in highlights form, USA and Brazil, two races bound to draw big audiences if shown live, were shown as highlights. Under this current agreement, I feel that there will be a yearly discussion about what things could/could not have been done differently as a result. With USA, Brazil and Mexico back to back in 2015, BBC will not be able to screen all three live, although at least one of the three will be screened live.

Still down on BBC only days
The combined average of 4.01m is up 2.3 percent on 2012’s 3.92m, but down 1.3 percent on 2013’s average of 4.06m. What is fascinating to me is the closeness of those three figures despite the complete parallels that each of those three seasons faced. 2012 had a battle between Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso until the end. 2013 arguably peaked in Malaysia from a fan perspective, with figures tumbling in the latter half of the season. In contrast, 2014 started with backlash from the wider media over the sound, or lack of, developing into a rivalry between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, inevitably helping the British figures in the final half of the year due to Hamilton’s involvement. I would suggest that it is a coincidence that the three years line up next to each other, although astonishing at the same time.

However, the 2011 season averaged 4.5m, a 10 percent drop. In fact, 2009, 2010 and 2011 all averaged higher than 2014. It will be, for me, an age old question of whether figures are really down 10 percent versus 2011, or whether more people are now watching Formula 1 via tablets, smart phones and as thus not being included in those figures. I don’t know. I’m not sure whether FOM even know the exact answer to that statement. For some people, 2009 through to 2011 will always be the barometer of Formula 1 coverage in the UK. Whether a group of fans bailed out of watching every race live at the end of 2011, I don’t know. I think it should probably be noted that a lot of shows have dropped year-on-year (the majority of ITV’s schedule is just one example), so in comparison, F1 has done well to hold onto the majority of its existing audience.

My own opinion is that viewing figures are down versus the BBC only days. That is an undeniable fact. When you include other devices, I think 2014 would close the gap in on 2011 slightly. Not significantly, as it seems clear to me that people have moved on. Sadly this is something that you cannot prove statistically, but anecdotally. If you were to grab a few people who have watched F1 at some stage in the past few years, chances are they would tell you that they are watching less F1 than when every race was live on BBC One, because it is not as readily available now as it was previously.

Heading into 2015
Whilst the overall picture is not exciting, the movement of viewers between BBC and Sky is somewhat interesting. There has been a 10 percent shift from BBC to Sky, although whether these are new viewers watching Sky’s coverage, or returning viewers to the channel from 2012, it is impossible to tell. It will be intriguing to see if Sky can continue the upwards swing heading into 2015, or whether BBC can claw back a few viewers off Sky that they have lost during 2014.

A BBC spokesperson said “In what has been a fantastic year with a wealth of sport available to watch on the BBC including the Winter Olympics, World Cup and Commonwealth Games we’re delighted with our F1 coverage this season which reached an impressive 26.1m people. This was undoubtedly helped by a brilliant season finale – Abu Dhabi was the most watched race of the season, with 6.5m people tuning in.”

BBC F1 vs Sky Sports F1: Your 2014 Verdict Revealed

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix concluded just under two weeks ago. After the race, I asked for your opinion on the BBC and Sky Sports Formula 1 programming this season. The response from readers have been fantastic, with 35 comments in total, a lot of them in depth, making for interesting reading.

The main conversation that dominated throughout was the improvement of Sky Sports F1’s coverage compared to 2013. Whilst there are one or two people who are not yet happy with the coverage, on the whole, things do seem to be changing.

The Sky team work together much better now than they did in there first season. It’s a well oiled machine now and for sure they have delivered on what they promised at the outset, by giving it the full Sky Sports treatment. Yes it may be expensive but it’s worth it in my opinion. – Mick

Once again Sky, well better coverage and longer builds than the BBC has, their graphics are mind blowing and their features are fantastic. – RubbishMonkey2014

Jamie praises Sky’s coverage, however says that the punditry does come across as “a bunch of middle aged men in suits having a chat.” I really like the point made by Elliot Smith, which would mirror ITV4’s British Touring Car Championship coverage if implemented:

Seeing as Sky have a dedicated channel I think, at least for the European races, they should have something like qualifying day live and race day live, where they are live from the start of FP3 through to the end of the GP3 race and then do the same on Sunday with GP3, GP2, get Porsche Supercup rights and show them, then have the F1 race. Also they really should have proper presenters for the GP2 and GP3 rather than just using the world feed.

With Sky’s coverage improving according to the majority of users that commented, the BBC’s coverage appears to be heading into reverse:

Despite having to pay for Sky F1 which still grates – I have given up on the BBC coverage completely. – C Williamson

The BBC is so bad now, losing some of their popular staff (most of them moved to Sky), plus the analysis is well behind compared to Sky’s analysis. – RubbishMonkey2014

Rob disagrees, but does believe that their coverage has dropped since Jake Humphrey left as presenter:

I have seen both Sky and the BBC coverage and will always choose the BBC. Okay, their coverage has dropped considerably from the Jake Humphrey days but it is still a lot better than Sky.

Another key subject was the commentary, however, there were clearly more negative comments about the BBC’s commentary compared with Sky:

Edwards gets worse and worse. It seems they don’t actually want to acknowledge that any of Sky’s presenters exist – Edwards’s tone when he found out Brundle was doing the podium interviews in Abu Dhabi; Coulthard saw Brundle coming on the grid walk in Abu Dhabi and went the long way around Hamilton’s car to avoid him; Edwards will go “oh, there’s [celebrity] in the [team] garage” for every single celebrity except Johnny Herbert or Damon Hil. – Rhys Benjamin

Also I have noticed that both the BBC and Sky commentary teams have started every single race with ‘Lights out and away we go…’ Is this now the only way to call the start of a motor race? I like a catchphrase as much as the next man but for me this isn’t even a particularly good one? – Lonestarstraits

An aspect of BBC’s coverage that has improved compared with last year is Suzi Perry’s presenting. James Rowe summarises the picture:

Regarding presenters, I think Suzi Perry has improved this year, I still don’t believe she is the best fit for the role but year-on-year, her rough edges have been smoothed out a touch.

Sky’s bias towards Lewis Hamilton was noted by readers such as f1picko, others said that this is not a Sky only issue:

If anything, I felt both were pro-Hamilton this season, which is annoying for someone like myself who wanted Rosberg to win. In Canada, Edwards shouted down the mic “ROSBERG GOES OFF AND HAMILTON LE—-oh, sorry, no he doesn’t.” – Rhys Benjamin

There were a few NBC related comments, all negative it has to be said. I’m going to be reviewing two of NBC’s F1 programming on this blog in the next month or so. I’ll end this with a comment that I completely agree with. “The dream team”, shall we call it.

Still hard to avoid the general conclusion that both channels have some excellent people / ideas and some dross and that if you put the two together it would be much better. – Richard

As always, the original post has a lot of detailed comments worth reading, the above is just a taster of what readers are talking about.

News round-up: Hamilton visits BBC; Perry staying with BBC

In this round-up, the first piece of the 2015 Formula One broadcasting jigsaw has moved into place, and the 2014 Formula One champion has been doing a few bits of a media…

Hamilton visits BBC, on multiple occasions
It has been a very busy week for Lewis Hamilton, following his title victory at last Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Monday started bright and early with media interviews from the likes of BBC Radio, NBC Sports and Sky Sports. 24 hours later, and Hamilton was up in Salford. Hamilton was live on BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio 5 Live, in the latter piece, he surprised a nine year old go-karting champion, which was a nice bit of radio to listen to!

On Thursday, Hamilton was on Nick Grimshaw’s Breakfast show on Radio 1, transforming the live lounge into a Scalextric track! He later dropped by ITV’s This Morning programme. Currently, he’s in Stuttgart for a Mercedes publicity event. So a very busy week for the world champion. One programme he was not on was The F1 Show last night due to the Stuttgart event, but I was happy to see Daniel Ricciardo as guest on the show, although admittedly this fact was not promoted too much. Nevertheless, it is nice to see F1 get a lot of publicity with Hamilton doing the media rounds.

Perry staying with BBC F1 for 2015
The first Formula 1 broadcasting announcement of the off-season is that Suzi Perry is definitely staying with the BBC F1 team for 2015, as announced on her Twitter account in response to a fan question. In terms of timescale, expect the 2015 BBC and Sky scheduling details to be confirmed just before Christmas, probably Friday 19th December based on previous years. If there are any major changes, I’d also expect that to be confirmed before Christmas as well, although its worth noting that Gary Anderson’s departure from BBC F1 was not publicly known until after the festive period.

Any broadcasting changes are likely to surround whether Jenson Button is in fact retiring, and if so, whether he wishes to stay in the paddock, but as a broadcaster. If the answer to both of those two questions is yes, then we could see some movement depending on whether Button wishes to join BBC or Sky. One suggestion that I have read is that David Coulthard could join Sky. That would free up a space on BBC’s team for Button to fit into. That would benefit both broadcasters in my eyes. We should get some idea of where things are heading in the next week or so, assuming McLaren do not hold off their driver announcement much longer.

Movement in World Superbikes
Over on two wheels, Steve Day and Gregory Haines have been confirmed as Dorna’s World Feed commentators for the World Superbike Championship. Day moves across from covering bikes for Eurosport since 2011, whilst Haines switches from the MotoGP paddock, where he was World Feed commentator this year alongside Nick Harris.

BBC and Sky programming over the festive period

The 2014 Christmas schedules are starting to come out and with that, some end of season reviews to make you aware of.

BBC have their usual season review, whilst over on Sky, they have an #AskCrofty Special and Midweek Report review before Christmas. Sky also have two specials concerning Lewis Hamilton and Johnny Herbert. Details are unknown about both shows, but I suspect the Hamilton special is Sky’s season review. Some team review details should filter through soon, assuming Sky are still going down that route as in previous years.

No sign of live coverage of the AUTOSPORT Awards or the FIA Gala on Sky Sports F1 in the UK, which shouldn’t be too surprising as they did not screen live coverage in 2012 or 2013, although highlights of the former were screened over the Christmas period last year. There is not a massive amount in the schedules at the moment, but listed below are the current scheduling details.

BBC F1
27/12/14 – 13:00 to 14:10 – Season Review (BBC One)

Sky F1
05/12/14 – 20:00 to 21:30 – The F1 Show #AskCrofty Special (Sky Sports F1)
10/12/14 – 21:15 to 22:15 – Midweek Report Season Review (Sky Sports F1)
13/12/14 – 23:00 to 00:00 – Lewis Hamilton: A Champion’s Story (Sky Sports 1 + F1)
19/12/14 – 20:35 to 21:30 – 2014 AUTOSPORT Awards Highlights (Sky Sports F1)

As always, any updates and I will update the above.

Update on December 13th – It looks like the Hamilton special is actually premièring on Monday 13th November at 23:00 on Sky Sports 1 and F1. What this means is that there is no season review over the Christmas period, and it also looks like there will be no team reviews over, so a significant reduction in output for the channel, besides the usual repeats.

Update on December 17th – Highlights of the AUTOSPORT Awards have been added to Sky’s schedules.

Update on December 23rd – The ‘Johnny Herbert: Life Without Limits’ show has disappeared completely from Sky’s schedules, so presumably the show is not happening.

Hamilton’s title win peaks with 7.9 million

A strong peak audience of 7.89m watched Lewis Hamilton become a two-time Formula One champion, unofficial overnight viewing figures show.

Race
BBC One’s live coverage of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, screened from 12:10 to 15:30, averaged 4.71m (35.2%), peaking with 6.53m (42.1%) as Hamilton crossed the line. A further 963k (7.3%) watched on Sky Sports F1 from 12:00 to 15:30, their coverage peaked with 1.36m (8.8%) at the same time. The combined average of 5.67m is the highest of the entire season, but it is not the highest ever for Abu Dhabi. In 2010, an average of 5.78m (41.4%) watched Sebastian Vettel’s title victory at the same race track. Having looked at the breakdown, the reason for this is because BBC’s coverage in 2010 started off very high having followed the Remembrance Sunday service directly before it, whereas the start of BBC’s coverage began at a relatively low base in comparison.

At the start of the race, 6.02m (46.8%) were watching BBC One and Sky Sports F1. As always, its worth remembering the figures refer to people, not homes, so this is six million people. That figure climbed quickly to 6.67m (48.7%) by 13:25. After a brief dip for both channels, the combined figure hit 6.84m (48.0%) at 13:50, breaking through the seven million barrier at 14:15. At 14:30, 7.50m (49.8%) were watching as Hamilton entered the final laps, peaking with 7.89m (50.9%) at 14:40. The peak is 530k higher than the 7.36m (50.5%) that watched Vettel’s title win at its peak four years ago.

It goes without saying that the numbers are significantly lower than the 8.8m average and 13.1m peak that watched Hamilton clinched his first title back in Brazil 2008. From a publicity point of view, it does Formula 1 no good whatsoever having the championship decider in Abu Dhabi. By doing that yesterday, Formula 1 lost several million viewers as a result. The UK numbers would have been higher had yesterday’s race been held in Brazil. Okay, I’m not saying the F1 would have peaked with 13.1m viewers yesterday had it been in Brazil as that had some fairly unique circumstances surrounding it, but the peak number would have been higher than 7.89m.

Sky’s extended post-race coverage reaped the rewards of Hamilton’s championship victory. An average of 340k (2.4%) watched their coverage from 15:30 to 16:50, remaining above 400k until after 16:00.

Qualifying and Formula E
Live coverage of qualifying averaged 2.38m (23.8%) on BBC One from 12:10 to 14:15. Sky Sports F1 added 341k (3.6%) during its extended 11:15 to 14:35 slot. The first 45 minutes averaged 208k (2.8%), which is a brilliant figure when you consider that a classic race in the same 45 minute period in the past has failed to average even half of that number. From 12:00 to 14:35, the channel averaged 380k (3.8%), with Sky1’s coverage bringing in 59k (0.6%). The combined figure of 2.82m for the coverage is down on last season’s number, BBC having had highlights of last year’s qualifying session on the fringes of primetime.

Elsewhere, Formula E dropped from its inaugural race in Beijing. Round 2 from Putrajaya averaged 66k (5.1%) from 05:00 to 07:30 on ITV4, peaking with 137k (7.2%) at 06:50. Highlights from 18:00 averaged 95k (0.5%). By no means stellar, but even those low figures beat all GP2 and GP3 programming on Sky Sports F1 and would compare solidly with MotoGP on BT Sport. Had that race been on BT Sport, the figures would have been embarrassing.

Three things did not help Formula E at the weekend. The first undoubtedly was the ten week gap, which sadly for the series was unavoidable. The Putrajaya race was originally meant to be held in October but was moved at the request of the Malaysian government. The date change meant it clashed with the Formula 1 season finale, and of course the late time change to avoid thunderstorms. So Formula E was always on the back foot. That should change now though as Uruguay, Argentina and two rounds in the USA follow between now and April which should help build an audience for the series from Beijing with the races being held in European primetime.

The 2013 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.