From BARB:
1 – 8k – Legends (Tuesday, 19:00)
2 – 5k – F1 2012: A Season to Remember (Saturday, 21:30)
3 – 4k – Malaysian Grand Prix Highlights (Wednesday, 20:00)
4 – 3k – Fast Track (Tuesday, 18:00)
5 – 3k – Fast Track (Friday, 18:00)
6 – 3k – Toro Rosso Season Review (Wednesday, 21:30)
7 – 3k – Bahrain Grand Prix Highlights (Friday, 20:00)
8 – 2k – Caterham Season Review (Tuesday, 21:30)
9 – 2k – Brazilian Grand Prix Highlights (Monday, 20:00)
10 – 2k – Legends (Friday, 19:00)
This week has seen the 2013 Formula One season get under way in full force with the now traditional car launches, with each team inviting the worlds’ media along to make their launch stand out the most. Some go for glitz, whilst others go for the old fashioned, but still perfectly adequate method of launching their machinery in pit-lane. Unfortunately though, whilst some launches have been good, others have turned into a blatant PR stunt and one launch turned ugly.
The launches have, mostly, been good. The week started off with Lotus launching their E21 car at their headquarters in Enstone on Monday. Initially though the launch did not go according to plan, high winds thwarted their original plan, and the team were forced to relocate inside to the factory. Nevertheless, after a quick turnaround, the team were back on track, launching their car at 19:15 UK time with Craig Slater overseeing proceedings. McLaren, like Lotus, launched their car at their headquarters in Woking. Although the first half hour were filled with Vodafone related PR material, the last thirty minutes picked up significantly, with a touching tribute to Bruce McLaren, along with cars from the past 50 years being driven around the McLaren lake. Lotus and McLaren definitely, for me, fell into the good category.
Force India followed up on Friday morning and, like in 2012, took the old school route launching their car actually at a race circuit, a few minutes away from their base at Silverstone. Ferrari and Sauber launched at their bases’ respectively, although if you were a Formula 1 journalist wanting to go to every launch, you would have to pick between them given the close timescale and long distance between the launches. Not very handy, although it is understandable why a team like Ferrari would prefer launching at their base in Maranello in Italy than England, for example.
At the aforementioned launches, the journalists were invited, they got to ask questions and could take photographs. The fans could watch via some form, whether it was via that teams’ YouTube channel or Sky Sports News, so they too felt involved. Mercedes and Red Bull had different ideas. Mercedes took the route that involved the fans, possibly a little too much. Now, whether this was deliberate on their behalf though, and therefore a blatant PR stunt, is open to interpretation. On Saturday, Mercedes tweeted that they would “engage fans with a unique F1 W04 online reveal”. Basically, the name of the game is that fans tweet, the more they tweet, the more the garage door opens, leading to the reveal. Unfortunately, what the did not anticipate is that the fans would overload their servers’, crashing their website. Or did they? Because late yesterday evening, they tweeted “keep retweeting #F1W04Reveal and the car will be unveiled progressively between now and Monday”. So, in other words, there is little point of retweeting #F1W04Reveal, because the car will not be unveiled any earlier, the launch remains on Monday. Yes, there are grainy pictures out there as a result of the garage door opening more, but it won’t fully open until Monday. Which, I suspect was always going to happen. Unfortunately, for Mercedes, this goes under the category of ‘blatant PR stunt’, which a significant group of fans and journalists fell for. If anything, the egg is on our faces, and not Mercedes.
Thankfully, Mercedes’ launch did not resort to physical violence. Unlike Red Bull’s, which nearly did. The purpose of car launches is to invite the media to said launch, they take photographs, they ask questions, the fans get to watch online and the teams get a bit of PR out of it. That is a ‘win win’ situation for everyone. Red Bull, at the last moment or not, we don’t know decided to ban media from taking photographs, while the online launch never appeared. To prevent the media from taking photographs, G4S were assigned the role of security at the launch. Respected Formula 1 technical journalist Craig Scarborough tweeted “Red Bull are aggressively stopping photos being taken, threaten[ing] to take cameras away.”, whilst Keith Collantine on the F1Fanatic.co.uk website said “G4S nearly snatched my phone off me.” May someone need to remind Red Bull that this is a Formula 1 car launch event and not a press conference full of international delegates? Yes, Formula 1 cars may live in a top secret world from time to time, but threatening to take cameras off people, at an event that you expect them to give you good PR for, is absolutely ludicrous. It is even more ludicrous when you consider that the Red Bull car will be in the public eye from Tuesday around Jerez. What will they do if the car breaks down? Steal the cameras of anyone that has taken a picture? As a point of clarity, for what it is worth, this poster on AUTOSPORT Forum said that they had problems with the online launch and that no cameras were taken away – even if the first point is true, they could have explained that on their Twitter feed which made no mention of said problems.
Compare the Red Bull launch to the McLaren one, where we were treated to a fantastic video with Gary Anderson and Suzi Perry intrinsically looking at the 2013 machine on the BBC Sport website. The problem is, whilst the McLaren launch is fantastic for the fans, the Red Bull one is not as fantastic with their secrecy. Another problem with all, but one, of these launches is the time of day the launches happen. Maybe it is about time that all the launches took place all in one evening, with every team getting a 20 minute slot to showcase their cars. Unfortunately, each team has their own political and sponsorship agenda that would let such an idea ever taking place as they like to be the spotlight, an event like that would mean everyone is on a level playing field, which teams would not like. It is a nice idea though. Hire out a big arena such as the O2 Arena or the NEC in Birmingham, have the worldwide media there along with 200 or so fans being invited, an FOM World Feed to stream to the likes of Sky Sports F1 and BBC online so that it is accessible to everyone, all in one place meaning Formula 1 is forefront of the spotlight. You could go one step further, and make Birmingham (or whichever city in Europe), the ‘host city’ for the weekend where Formula 1 activities take place during that weekend, from car demonstrations to driver signings. With the focus on that city and the world’s motor sport media descending on that location, it may be a small money spinner. It also would reduce travel costs, all the media would travel to one launch instead of having to take flights to multiple launches at different locations.
At least, then, you wouldn’t have certain teams’ threatening journalists for simply doing their job…
The BBC have announced some changes to their multi-platform Formula 1 coverage as a result of the Delivering Quality First changes concerning the Red Button.
Their 2013 coverage page has been updated to rectify the fact that the Red Button service has been reduced from five streams to one stream. The first sign of change is previously the page said that you could “customise their viewing experience through the BBC’s multi-platform offering”, this has been adjusted to say that the audience can “customise their viewing experience online”, meaning that it appears you will not be able to watch the races on-board through the Red Button because of the Delivering Quality First cuts.
Furthermore, this paragraph was previously in the Red Button section of that webpage: “On race day, viewers will be able to choose from three different video streams: the main network feed with a choice of commentary from BBC One and BBC Radio 5 live; a split screen comprising the main network feed, an in-car camera feed and leaderboard; or rolling highlights.”
That paragraph has now been removed entirely, whilst only “selected on-track sessions” from BBC’s live ten races will be broadcast behind the Red Button, instead of “all on-track sessions” from those races as it was previously. I’m not sure which sessions, but I suspect the odd practice session that BBC have the rights to show live will be online only depending on clashes with other events. In those circumstances, it would be nice if practice was shown on BBC Two as I suggested at the end of 2012, but I don’t think that is highly likely, nor is it suggested in the updated version of the BBC coverage page.
One final thing that page has removed is mentions of Jaime Alguersuari, who is unlikely to return to his 5 Live commentary role this season. The BBC team for 2013 has not yet been officially confirmed, but aside from the presenter change, everything else is likely to remain the same.
Sky have revealed their financial results for the second half of 2012 from June 30th, 2012 to December 30th, 2012. In it contains the following parts touting the success of Sky Sports F1:
“In its debut season, the Sky Sports F1 channel reached more than nine million viewers while Sky Sports on Sky Go, our mobile TV service, continues to grow in popularity, registering a record 234,000 unique users for live coverage of the Manchester derby in December.”
“Sports [programming costs] accounted for £48 million of the increase which was predominantly due to the inclusion of Formula 1 and Ryder Cup rights not in the prior year together with the England and Sri Lankan cricket tours to India and Australia respectively.”
With regards the first point, nine million viewers is the amount of the viewers that have watched the channel for three consecutive increase. This is an increase from the 7.3 million viewers it reached for the first 10 races last year, meaning that the channel reached 1.7 million new viewers in the second half of 2012. As noted previously, the reach figure is simply that, a ‘roof’ figure and should not be taken as nine million viewers watching each race as that, in my opinion, is PR spin when the average figures are significantly lower.
The second point concerns the record unique number of users for the football Manchester derby on Sky Go. That statement is unclear in nature because it says ‘mobile TV service’, therefore I don’t know if it includes every possible method of watching via Sky Go. If it does, I find that figure low myself, and given that Formula 1 is less popular than football, I would be interested to see how many watched the United States Grand Prix via this method. The football figure suggests it is not a lot, probably around ~150k or 200k at most – which would not bump the overall Formula 1 ratings significantly.
One of the key questions fans that want to watch every F1 race live in 2013 over the Winter will have been asking is ‘how much does Sky Sports F1 cost to view?’. The answer, is that you are likely going to have to part with at least £100.00 – maybe more. But how much exactly? That answer depends on what you want to watch.
Starting with Sky, the first option is to switch from your current provider to Sky, purchasing the Sports Pack on top of the required Entertainment Pack. The Sports Pack costs £21.00 a month, meaning that when you include the compulsory Entertainment Pack, this option will put you back £42.50 a month. Given that 12 months is the minimum subscription (see the small print here), this is £510.00 a year, which is probably not the most desirable option for those just wanting their dose of Formula 1.
Aside from the Sports Pack, as with in 2012, you can also access Sky Sports F1 with the HD Pack (assuming you have a HD ready TV). The HD Pack is £10.25 a month, which on top of the Entertainment Pack as with above costs £31.75 a month, or £381.00 a year – substantially cheaper than taking the channel with the Sports Pack.
Moving away from TV, and we move towards viewing Formula 1 via Sky Go’s Monthly Ticket system. Unfortunately, Sky do not offer the Sports Pack on its own, instead like with TV you have to add the Entertainment Pack at a cost of £35.00 a month. Whilst that is more than the ‘TV with HD Pack’ option above, the benefit of Sky Go’s Monthly Ticket is that it is simply that – a monthly ticket which you renew, if you wish, every month. With that in mind, the 2013 calendar is as follows:
– March 17th – Australia (Melbourne) – Sky
– March 24th – Malaysia (Sepang) – Sky
– April 14st – China (Shanghai) – BBC and Sky
– April 21st – Bahrain (Sakhir) – Sky
– May 12th – Spain (Barcelona) – BBC and Sky
– May 26th – Monaco (Monte Carlo) – Sky
– June 9th – Canada (Montreal) – BBC and Sky
– June 30th – Britain (Silverstone) – BBC and Sky
– July 7th – Germany (Nurburgring) – Sky
– July 21st – ‘a European round’ – BBC and Sky
– July 28th – Hungary (Hungaroring) – Sky
– August 25th – Belgium (Spa) – BBC and Sky
– September 8th – Italy (Monza) – BBC and Sky
– September 22nd – Singapore (Marina Bay) – Sky
– October 6th – Korea (Yeongam) – Sky
– October 13th – Japan (Suzuka) – BBC and Sky
– October 27th – India (Buddh International Circuit) – BBC and Sky
– November 3rd – Abu Dhabi (Yas Marina) – Sky
– November 17th – United States (Austin) – Sky
– November 24th – Brazil (Interlagos) – BBC and Sky
If you want to watch every race live:
– ticket 1 can be used from March 14th to April 14th (Australia and Malaysia)
– ticket 2 can be used from April 14th to May 14th (Bahrain)
– ticket 3 can be used from May 14th to June 14th (Monaco)
– ticket 4 can be used from July 1st to August 1st (Germany and Hungary)
– ticket 5 can be used from September 15th to October 15th (Singapore and Korea)
– ticket 6 can be used from October 30th to November 3oth (Abu Dhabi and USA)
Six tickets at £35.00 is £210.00 at most – less than half of the first pack mentioned. Of course, you could decide you don’t want to watch Bahrain understandably so that cost can reduce to £175.00 for example.
But can you get it even cheaper? From today, you can. Sky have announced that their internet TV service NOW TV will be available on a pay-as-you-go basis for £9.99 a day. What this means is that you can watch the ten Sky exclusive races for £99.90. If you want to add Qualifying to that, however, this will increase to £199.80. My own personal opinion is that £9.99 a day is too steep – I guess it depends though whether you are just interested in F1 or Sport as a whole, if it is the latter than the Sky Go Monthly Ticket may appeal more, whereas F1 only fans may be more enticed into buying several NOW TV pay-as-you-go days.
Over on Virgin Media, their Sky Sports Collection pack is available for £25.75. Add the TV M+ package on top of that and you are looking at £39.75 a month, or £477 a year. As of writing, Sky Sports F1 is not available on BT Vision or Freeview, meaning that the above are the only viable options.
To summarise:
– £510.00 a year – Sky TV – Entertainment + Sports Packs
– £477.00 a year – Virgin Media TV – M+ + Sky Sports Collection
– £381.00 a year – Sky TV – Entertainment + HD Packs
– £299.70 – NOW TV – Practice, Qualifying and Race
– £210.00 – Sky Go Monthly Ticket
– £199.80 – NOW TV – Qualifying and Race
– £99.90 – NOW TV – Race
All prices correct as of Thursday 31st January 2013. Information contained in this blog post is subject to change.
Update on February 7th – Sky are running an offer concerning Sky Sports F1. Customers already with Sky can upgrade to the HD pack for £5 for the next six months, before that price increases to £10.25 a month in-line with other customers. Customers new to Sky can watch the Sky Sports F1 via the HD pack for a total of £26.50 a month, increasing to £31.75 after the six months. The offer runs out on March 31st. In theory, you can join Sky on March 14th, meaning the six months run to September 14th. As the minimum contract is 12 months, the total is £349.50 a year if you wish to upgrade or become a new customer via the HD pack. The price therefore is the cheapest way to view via Sky TV, although the Sky Go Monthly Ticket is cheaper for those that prefer that option.
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