Hamilton’s win helps Hungarian Grand Prix perform well against Olympics backdrop

The move by FIA and FOM to schedule the Hungarian Grand Prix on the opening weekend of the London 2012 Olympic Games may have left a lot to be desired, but nevertheless, the ratings performed solidly.

Sunday’s coverage of the race had 658,000 (5%) on Sky Sports F1 from 11:30 according to Media Guardian, while the highlights on BBC One at 17:00 had 3.64m (20.3%), bringing a total figure of 4.30 million. Being brutally honest here, it would not have mattered whether the race was on BBC One exclusively or not (if we were still in the previous deal), coverage would have been down anyway. So to only be 340,000 viewers down year-on-year shows that the rating is extremely good in the circumstances.

Qualifying on Saturday had 1.5 million on BBC Two alone, again, a good rating in the circumstances with wall-to-wall Olympics coverage on BBC One.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 22nd July, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 989k – Live German Grand Prix (Sunday, 11:30)
2 – 608k – Live German Grand Prix: Qualifying (Saturday, 12:00)
3 – 148k – Live German Grand Prix: Practice 3 (Saturday, 09:45)
4 – 100k – Live German Grand Prix: GP2 Feature Race (Saturday, 14:35)
5 – 83k – Porsche Supercup: Britain (Saturday, 11:46)
6 – 82k – Live German Grand Prix: Practice 1 (Friday, 08:45)
7 – 82k – Jenson Button Interview (Saturday, 11:16)
8 – 77k – Jenson Button Interview (Sunday, 10:59)
9 – 75k – German Grand Prix: Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 21:02)
10 – 72k – Live German Grand Prix: Practice 2 (Friday, 12:45)

The first thing I need to note is that the channel reach was the highest ever, with a total reach of 3.515 million viewers, this partly thanks to its free weekend. If you compare it to Sky’s other exclusive races so far however:

– 3.515 million – Germany
– 3.473 million – Malaysia
– 3.419 million – Bahrain
– 3.405 million – Australia
– 3.270 million – Canada

And there is not a huge difference it has to be said between the reach for Germany and the previous highest channel reach for Malaysia.

Nevertheless, there is a marked improvement in the figures above. While Friday’s figures are nothing to write home about, Saturday’s and Sunday’s figures are up notably on normal. The Qualifying figure, GP2 Feature Race figure and the Race day figures were the highest ever respectively for the channel. Despite this, when looking at the full picture:

Qualifying: 0.608m [SSF1 live] + 1.14m [BBC2] + 0.12m [BBC HD] = 1.87 million
<bRace: 0.989m [SSF1 live] + 1.90m [BBC2] + 0.292m [BBC HD] = 3.18 million

Both figures are the lowest since 2008, the race turns out to be the lowest since 2006. You could argue “you’re using full programme averages, that’s unfair!”. But so are all of the other figures I am using, so it is a level playing field. Even if I did use Sky’s race average, which was about 1.5 million, that would be a total of 3.69 million, which would be the lowest figure since 2008. Figures are down year-on-year, whichever way you attempt to spin the figures.

Although the figures are down, I do think it is worth praising the GP2 Series figure. In my opinion, it is extremely important that the figures improve, and that Sky promote GP2 more, as these people are the future of Formula 1. The field features British talent such as James Calado and Max Chilton, yet the series does not get any airtime on Sky Sports News or outside of the main programme. Even ITV4 had a programme in 2008, it is about time Sky gives it a proper intro and outro!

As always, your thoughts and opinions are welcome.

The Twitter outlook

It’s nearly Summer! Well, nearly. First there is the small matter of the Hungarian Grand Prix. How did Germany affect things? Let’s find out:

Drivers – The Top 10
01 – 1,043,286 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 922,645 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
03 – 905,801 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
04 – 456,170 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 398,912 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 237,296 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
07 – 233,401 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
08 – 181,112 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
09 – 164,202 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
10 – 158,310 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)

Drivers – Biggest Increases
01 – 47,940 – Fernando Alonso
02 – 13,510 – Lewis Hamilton
03 – 12,193 – Jenson Button
04 – 6,386 – Mark Webber
05 – 5,244 – Bruno Senna

Drivers – Smallest Increases
01 – 445 – Charles Pic
02 – 609 – Jean-Eric Vergne
03 – 746 – Timo Glock
04 – 870 – Daniel Ricciardo
05 – 1,078 – Nico Hulkenberg

The main thing I need to note here is Fernando Alonso smashing the 900,000 barrier, which means he will certainly be overtaking Lewis Hamilton in the next few days.

Teams – The Top 10
01 – 308,397 – Ferrari
02 – 213,112 – McLaren
03 – 138,600 – Mercedes
04 – 136,853 – Red Bull
05 – 121,231 – Lotus
06 – 81,094 – Caterham
07 – 74,025 – Marussia
08 – 70,651 – Williams
09 – 70,353 – Force India
10 – 65,500 – Sauber

Teams – Biggest Increases
01 – 4,595 – Ferrari
02 – 3,064 – Red Bull
03 – 2,806 – McLaren

Teams – Smallest Increases
01 – 602 – Toro Rosso
02 – 720 – Caterham
03 – 860 – Marussia

Driver and Team statistics as of Tuesday 24th July 2012.

News Articles – German Grand Prix

A summary of all the opinion and blog pieces from BBC and Sky over the past few days since the German Grand Prix.

BBC
– Andrew Benson‘s Post-Race blog
– Gary Anderson‘s Technical Review
– Jaime Alguersuari‘s weekly blog

Sky
– Ted Kravitz‘s Notebook
– Pete Gill‘s Conclusions
– Martin Brundle comments on Sebastian Vettel’s penalty
– Mike Wise‘s Diary
– Mark Hughes on Red Bull’s engine mapping

Sky tout Sky Sports F1’s success, with a 7.3 million reach

Sky have today revealed their financial results for the past twelve months from June 30th, 2011 to June 30th, 2012. Below is the parts of the press release where they tout the success of Sky Sports F1:

“Our ‘Summer of Sport in HD’ campaign combined with the continued success of our Sky Sports F1 HD channel contributed to 121,000 HD additions in the quarter. With over half a million additions across the year, HD penetration of our base has now reached 41%.”

“Our innovative new coverage of Formula 1 on Sky Sports F1 HD continues with an unprecedented and exciting start to the season with seven different winners in the first ten races and over 7.3 million viewers watching the new channel.”

“Sports costs were £12 million higher year on year with the first time inclusion of the Formula 1 channel being partly offset by lower costs for cricket, golf and boxing due to the absence of biennial and other events such as the Ryder Cup and the Haye Klitschko fight that were included in the comparative year.”

Of course the 7.3 million viewership figure above is a three minute reach for the channel, so to say “7.3 million viewers have watched at least three minutes of the Sky Sports F1 channel” since it launched in March. Of course, those that read my blog will know that the programme averages from 11:30 to 16:15 or 12:00 to 14:35, or whatever it may be, is substantially lower than the 7.3 million touted above.

I don’t know what the respective cricket, golf and boxing budgets are, so it would be inaccurate of me to attempt to work out how much Formula 1 costs for Sky, apart from using the £40 million figure that has already been quoted in the press when the deal was announced last year.