On the subject of money…

Two comments in the past few days have raised my eye-brows and got me thinking a bit when you think about the current UK F1 television landscape in relation to the current situation we find ourselves in. The first is a comment from Ben Anderson on the AUTOSPORT website:

“It also doesn’t seem fair to try to squeeze more money out of TV companies and race promoters at a time of falling audiences and race attendance.”

The second is a comment from David Emmett, a MotoGP journalist, in a conversation I was having with him and a few others on Twitter last night:

“Not sure there’s as much room for Bernie to try to push TV revenue.”

The UK rights were negotiated in Summer 2011 as BBC renegotiated their existing deal, to bring Sky Sports into the picture to what we have now. As discussed earlier this year, the F1 rights currently are in the region of £55 million per year. Since 2011, BT Sport have entered the picture, and the cost of some rights has frankly entered the ‘silly’ territory. BT Sport paid £299 million per season to screen the Champions League from 2015-16. That’s absolute insanity. On a smaller level, MotoGP’s value multiplied several times over when it went from the BBC to BT Sport.

My point being that, with Formula 1 rights on lockdown until at least the 2019 season, FOM are losing a ton of money at the moment. If you renegotiated the rights today, or sent them to the market, in my opinion the rights value would easily head skyward of £100 million per year, probably near £200 million. And when you consider that it costs £75 million a year (based on current conversion rates) to run an F1 team, the £100 million difference between the current rights fee and what it could be in a hypothetical situation, FOM is missing out on a huge amount of money.

Of course, with any such increase, you can kiss goodbye to any terrestrial television coverage. What we have now is the best of both worlds, even if FOM are being short-changed…

Scheduling: The 2014 United States Grand Prix

The United States Grand Prix is the seventeenth of nineteen stops on this season’s Formula One calendar. Now in its third year, the Circuit of the Americas plays host to the ongoing battle between Mercedes team-mates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, the Brit currently with the upper hand. Sky Sports have this race, and Brazil, exclusively live with BBC screening highlights. On the personnel front, Bruno Senna is with Sky for his sixth race of the year and James Allen is back in the 5 Live saddle for the final three races this year.

In a move likely to anger some people, the BBC highlights show has shrunk from two hours to an hour and a half, all previous American timezone races were two hours. This also applies for Brazil next weekend. I should note that BBC One in the 21:00 slot currently has a Death in Paradise repeat. They may well be planning a late swap, moving the F1 highlights to 21:00, with the news at 22:30. Of course, that would mean the highlights starting whilst the race is still ongoing which, whilst good for the viewers, could be something that Sky would object to as they would not benefit in any way. Hence, a compromise could be scheduling the highlights at 22:30, but actually airing them at 21:00 and announcing it at the latest possible opportunity, so that Sky do not lose out as a result. But we will see what happens.

Thursday 30th October
16:00 to 16:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
21:00 to 22:00 – F1: Preview (BBC Radio 5 Live)

Friday 31st October
10:00 to 10:15 – Gear Up for USA (Sky Sports F1)
14:45 to 16:50 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
14:55 to 16:35 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
18:45 to 21:00 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
18:55 to 20:35 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
21:00 to 21:45 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
23:00 to 00:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)

Saturday 1st November
14:45 to 16:15 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
14:55 to 16:05 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
17:00 to 19:45 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
17:55 to 19:05 – F1: Qualifying (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
22:00 to 23:15 – F1: Qualifying Highlights (BBC Two)

Sunday 2nd November
02:30 to 09:35 – WEC: Shanghai (Motors TV)
07:30 to 09:00 – WEC: Shanghai (Eurosport)
18:30 to 23:15 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
=> 18:30 – Track Parade
=> 19:00 – Race (simulcast on Sky Sports 1)
=> 22:30 – Paddock Live
19:30 to 22:00 – F1: Race (BBC Radio 5 Live)
23:15 to 00:15 – GP Heroes: Emerson Fittipaldi (Sky Sports F1)
22:30 to 00:00 – F1: Race Highlights (BBC One)

Wednesday 5th November
20:30 to 21:00 – Midweek Report (Sky Sports F1)

Classic F1 on Sky Sports F1
25/10 – 21:00 to 22:00 – 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix Highlights
26/10 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1982 German Grand Prix Highlights
27/10 – 21:00 to 23:15 – 2012 Canadian Grand Prix (Sky commentary)
28/10 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1996 German Grand Prix Highlights
29/10 – 21:00 to 23:15 – 1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix
30/10 – 21:00 to 22:45 – 2007 United States Grand Prix
31/10 – 16:50 to 17:35 – 1987 Detroit Grand Prix Highlights
31/10 – 21:45 to 22:45 – 1977 Season Review
01/11 – 16:15 to 17:00 – 1982 Caesars Palace Grand Prix Highlights
02/11 – 14:15 to 15:15 – 1977 Season Review
02/11 – 00:15 to 00:45 – 1990 United States Grand Prix Highlights

This is the schedule as it stands, but as always I will update the above if anything changes.

Update on October 26th – I notice Sky are simulcasting next Sunday’s race on Sky Sports 1, the first time that has happened. They have simulcast the qualifying session on Sky1 before, but this is the first time the race will be simulcast on a different channel. No word yet on if Brazil could follow suit.

3.9m watch inaugural Russian Grand Prix

The Russian Grand Prix performed solidly in the UK viewing figures yesterday, unofficial overnight figures show.

Race
BBC One’s coverage of the race from 11:00 to 14:15 averaged 3.22m (31.3%), peaking with 4.56m (38.1%) at 13:30. Sky Sports F1 added an average of 665k (6.5%) from 11:00 to 14:30, peaking with 985k (8.2%). Obviously there are no historical comparisons, however the combined average of 3.89m is directly in-line with the season average so far, so its not a great rating, but it is not a poor rating either.

The combined peak figure of 5.55m (46.3%) at 13:30 is split 82% vs 18% in BBC’s favour, which is similar to the peak splits in the past, suggesting that there has been no real movement between the two channels in the past two years. As an aside, that peak figure is pretty impressive, which might indicate that some of the more casual audience was caught out by the earlier start time. Considering the race quality was pretty bad, it did well to hold a stable audience throughout, I suspect Lewis Hamilton leading had a lot to play in that. As there was a lot of motor sport yesterday, there will be another post soon summarising the remaining motor sport numbers from BTCC to MotoGP.

Qualifying
Live coverage of qualifying on BBC One averaged 2.10m (25.5%) from 11:15 to 13:30, whilst Sky Sports F1’s coverage from 11:20 to 13:35 averaged 442k (5.3%). The combined average of 2.54m is just above average, so a solid rating there. The most interesting story from Saturday though was not the qualifying rating itself, but rather how well the GP3 Series did sandwiched between practice and qualifying.

On Saturday, Sky Sports F1 stayed above 100k from 08:45 to 13:35, this including F1’s practice three and qualifying. I thought Sky did a clever move here, wrapping the qualifying build-up around GP3. The GP3 race from 10:35 to 11:20 averaged 161k (2.4%), which is an excellent number and Sky’s highest ever for a GP2 or GP3 race. GP2 after qualifying averaged 53k (0.6%), showing how much either GP2 or GP3 would benefit from a permanent slot in between F1 practice and qualifying on Saturday’s. Yes, Sky may ‘lose’ twenty minutes of F1 build-up, but how else are the likes of Jolyon Palmer going to introduce themselves to an F1 audience? If ‘the powers that be’ are reading, maybe Russia’s Saturday scheduling could become permanent for 2015…

2014 Japanese Grand Prix UK ratings report

Race
BBC One’s live coverage from 06:00 to 09:15 averaged 1.74m (37.1%), up on last year’s 1.30m (30.5%) Sky Sports F1 averaged 494k (10.0%) from 06:00 to 09:30, up on last year’s 370k. BBC One’s repeat from 13:15 to 15:15 averaged 2.24m (21.3%), up on last year’s 1.92m (15.3%).

The BBC live programme peaked with 2.84m (33.6%) at 09:05, with Sky’s live coverage peaking with 776k (9.5%) at 08:50. 3.55m (42.0%) were watching BBC One and Sky Sports F1 at 09:05. BBC’s highlights peaked with 2.80m (25.1%) at 14:55.

Year-on-year, the combined number of 4.48m is up significantly on 3.58m in 2013 and is the most watched Japanese Grand Prix since at least 2006, and probably the last decade and a half. Same applies for the combined peak of 6.35m, which is the second highest peak of the entire year. Given the circumstances, those facts are not worth boasting about though, really.

The 2013 Japanese Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.

Sky pull remainder of today’s schedule

In light of this morning’s events in Japan, Sky have pulled the remainder of today’s F1 programming on Sky Sports F1. For the record, this is how the revised schedule for today (Sunday 5th October 2014) went:

06:00 – Live Japanese Grand Prix
10:15 – GP Heroes: Niki Lauda
11:15 – Horse Power
12:15 to 06:00 – Your Home of Formula One

Paddock Live was integrated into the main programme although in reality it was not your typical post-race show. Any programming related to the Japanese Grand Prix weekend was dropped, including Ted’s post-race Notebook (presumably they never filmed a notebook) and highlights showings. Their Classic F1 race, highlights of the 1994 Japanese Grand Prix, was also dropped.

BBC aired their highlights programme as normal at 13:15, this was accompanied by a message from Suzi Perry at the start of the show noting Jules Bianchi’s current condition, but that the accident would not be shown in the broadcast (as was the case in the live airing). For those stumbling across this post, as is always the case, BBC and Sky take the Formula One Management (FOM) World Feed, which did not play out Bianchi’s accident.

Update on October 5th at 18:00 – Sky have pulled repeats of practice that were meant to be broadcast tomorrow morning (Monday 6th October), and will remain off-air until at least 13:00.

Update on October 6th – Sky went back to their normal schedule at 13:00.