Tag: BT Sport

All posts relating to BT Sport.

Thomas and Griffiths no longer part of BT’s MotoGP team

Iwan Thomas and Abi Griffiths will not be part of BT Sport’s MotoGP team for the 2016 season, it has been confirmed.

Both Thomas and Griffiths took to Twitter to announce the news:

The confirmation follows the announcement last week that Suzi Perry is joining BT’s team, presenting alongside Craig Doyle throughout the season, although she will not be on-site until Jerez.

Given the Perry news, it is not too surprising that Thomas and Griffiths are leaving the team, although somewhat disappointing in the case of the latter as I thought Griffiths grew as MotoGP presenter throughout 2015. Inevitably, there was always going to be someone being dropped somewhere down the train as a result of Formula 1 moving to Channel 4, and this appears to be where the buck has stopped.

In other MotoGP news, BT Sport’s coverage this season will be sponsored by Suzuki.

Live streaming fails to impress for inaugural Mexico City ePrix

The inaugural Mexico City ePrix peaked with 331k across live and highlights this past weekend, overnight viewing figures show. However, numbers were dented by the lack of live coverage on ITV’s portfolio of channels and failed to pick up through live streaming.

Live coverage of the Formula E race, broadcast live on BT Sport Europe on Saturday (12th March), averaged 20k (0.12%) from 21:45 to 23:30, peaking with 38k (0.21%) at 22:00. It was the first time that BT Sport had covered the series live, as ITV4 were covering the snooker World Grand Prix tournament on Saturday evening. ITV4 aired delayed coverage from 23:15, which was watched by a further 38k (0.6%), peaking with 75k (0.8%) at 23:30.

The combined ‘live’ audience of 58k and combined peak audience of 113k is significantly down on the live ITV numbers for Punta del Este and Buenos Aires. Highlights of the race, broadcast on ITV’s main channel from 09:30 to 10:25 on Sunday morning, averaged 163k (2.5%), peaking with 218k (3.3%). It is clear now that the highlights programme has settled into this region, although the Mexico programme did not see any uplift with viewers tuning in who would normally watch the live broadcast. The total combined audience is therefore 220k with a combined peak audience of 331k across the three programmes.

Elsewhere, the 2016 IndyCar Series began on BT Sport//ESPN on Sunday evening. The race, airing live from 16:30 to 19:10, averaged 15k (0.09%), peaking with 29k. If anything, that is where IndyCar tends to be in the viewing figures, so no change on that front.

Live streaming
Despite Formula E not airing live on ITV4, a jump in numbers for their live streaming did not materialise. Around 2,000 devices were watching Formula E’s live stream of the Mexico City ePrix on YouTube, with around 260 devices active on the Daily Motion stream (note: I made reference to ‘people’ as opposed to ‘devices’ on Twitter, the latter is the more correct terminology – four people could be watching one device).

Earlier on Saturday, around 3,200 devices were watching the Indy Lights race on YouTube, with 2,200 devices watching Formula E’s qualifying session. The reason Formula E’s number is higher for qualifying than the race is because the race stream would have been geo-blocked in a lot more countries than a few hours earlier. Either way, these numbers are very low and show why, for the likes of Formula E, television is still king and should not be forgotten.

It is worth emphasising that, whilst YouTube is huge, live streaming on YouTube is not, the most popular stream as I write this has 4,700 devices watching it. In comparison, over on Twitch, the top 20 streams all have over 4,700 devices watching. The most popular stream has 32,800 viewers/devices watching it as of writing. This explains, to some degree, why Formula E is trying to tap into the Twitch market as that is where the viewers are, at the moment Twitch is one of Formula E’s competitors despite the two not being in direct competition.

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Scheduling: The 2016 Qatar MotoGP

After a titanic battle between Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo last year, with Marc Marquez getting involved at the end, the 2016 MotoGP championship has a lot to live up to. Unusually, the action gets underway on the same day as the start of the Formula One season in Australia, the first time that has happened since 1995 – back then it was Formula One in Brazil and MotoGP in Eastern Creek, Australia.

The main news over the Winter is that Suzi Perry will be part of BT Sport’s MotoGP team for the 2016 season, presenting alongside Craig Doyle. Perry last presented MotoGP in 2009 with the BBC. Presenting duties have since travelled past Jennie Gow, Matt Roberts, Melanie Sykes and more recently the aforementioned Doyle. Perry and Doyle will be joined by Keith Huewen and Julian Ryder, now in their third season as commentators on BT Sport.

BT Sport’s 2016 coverage kicks off with a preview show live on Thursday afternoon from Qatar. Doyle presents the programme, with regular MotoGP faces Gavin Emmett and Neil Hodgson alongside him. BT’s post-race show, The Chequered Flag returns for a second year. Notably, in the past few days, Iwan Thomas has been removed from the description for that show. I don’t know his or Abi Griffiths’ status with regards to BT’s MotoGP coverage this year, but I will update this site if we get any updates on that front.

As has been the case since this deal came into effect, ITV4 will again be screening highlights every Monday after a race weekend which is good news for those of you that do not have access to BT Sport. BT Sport reaped the rewards of a fantastic MotoGP season last year, and they will be hoping that viewing figures continue to increase as year three of their coverage gets underway. In the next few days,

MotoGP – Qatar (BT Sport 2)
17/03 – 14:00 to 15:00 – Preview
17/03 – 15:00 to 19:45 – Practice
18/03 – 14:45 to 19:00 – Practice
19/03 – 14:30 to 18:30 – Qualifying
20/03 – 14:45 to 19:00 – Races
=> 14:45 – Moto3
=> 16:15 – Moto2
=> 17:45 – MotoGP
20/03 – 19:00 to 20:00 – Chequered Flag

MotoGP – Qatar (BT Sport Xtra)
20/03 – 12:45 to 14:45 – Warm Up

MotoGP – Qatar (ITV4)
21/03 – 20:00 to 21:00 – Highlights

As always, if anything changes, I will update the schedule.

Update on March 16th – Perry has confirmed that she will not be in Qatar. Her first appearance with the BT team will be in Jerez. Furthermore, both Thomas and Griffiths are no longer part of BT’s team.

Suzi Perry joins BT Sport, including MotoGP

Suzi Perry is to join BT Sport’s line-up, it has been officially confirmed.

Perry, who presented BBC’s MotoGP coverage from 2003 to 2009, and then their Formula 1 coverage from 2013 through to the end of 2015, confirmed last month that she would not be part of Channel 4’s F1 team. The BT news was first reported by Charles Sale last week. Perry will be part of their MotoGP presenting line-up alongside Craig Doyle.

The press release states that Perry will “showcase her knowledge across BT Sport’s coverage, including the FIM MotoGP™ World Championship, FIM Speedway and the World Rally Championship.” Perry will present other strands on the channel, which will be announced in the forthcoming weeks.

Commenting on the news, Perry said: “I’m really excited to be joining BT Sport and working with their tremendous team. Motorsport continues to be massive in the UK and I can’t wait to bring BT Sport viewers all of the action from in front of the camera.”

Simon Green, Head of BT Sport, added: “Suzi is an extremely popular and well respected TV presenter and I’m delighted she is joining our team. Our viewers will really benefit from her vast motorsport knowledge and experience across our growing portfolio of motorsport.”

It is a great move by BT to bolster their MotoGP line-up, and a logical move given that Perry became a free agent with no Formula 1 to occupy her time. Perry and motor cycling are a natural fit as we have seen in the past. Notably, BT Sport’s press release omits Iwan Thomas and Abi Griffiths from their MotoGP presenting team.

It appears Thomas is remaining part of BT’s output, as he is listed as presenter for The Chequered Flag (also staying) following the first race of 2016 in Qatar. It looks like Griffiths has had her role reduced, or she has been dropped altogether from the MotoGP presenting team. I hope it is not the latter, as it was Griffiths improved significantly across the year and a half that she was part of the team.

Update on March 12th – I note that Thomas is no longer listed as presenter of The Chequered Flag on the TV guides, so it seems his status is unclear.

Update on March 16th – Both Thomas and Griffiths are no longer part of BT’s team for 2016.

Scheduling: The 2016 Mexico City ePrix / IndyCar opener

Formula E heads into new territory in more ways than one for round five of the 2015-16 season. Next weekend is the first race for the series in Mexico, but also is the first race not to be shown live on ITV in the UK. Due to a snooker event, ITV4 will be airing delayed coverage later in the evening.

ITV’s delayed coverage will have the usual studio build-up and race reaction with Jennie Gow presenting alongside Jaime Alguersuari and Marc Priestley. On the Formula E World Feed, Scott Speed is deputising for Dario Franchitti, the latter is in St. Petersburg for IndyCar next weekend. It means that Jack Nicholls and Franchitti will now not be together until the Paris ePrix on April 23rd, as Nicholls will be missing the Long Beach round due to his Formula 1 commitments with BBC Radio 5 Live.

> FREE Full Race Replay – 2015 Beijing ePrix
> FREE Full Race Replay – 2015 Putrajaya ePrix
> FREE Full Race Replay – 2015 Punta del Este ePrix
> FREE Full Race Replay – 2015 Buenos Aires ePrix

As a result of ITV4 not showing the race live, it means that the race will be available for UK viewers to watch online as well as BT Sport Europe. It is the first time that BT have shown a Formula E race live. Obviously the viewing figures for both that and the YouTube stream will be interesting to monitor as a comparison to ITV4’s usual numbers.

Next weekend marks the beginning of the aforementioned IndyCar Series from St. Petersburg. The series will again be broadcast on BT Sport in 2016 as part of a deal that runs through to the end of 2022.

The schedule as usual can be found below:

Formula E – Mexico City (online via FIAFormulaE.com and YouTube)
12/03 – 14:10 to 15:10 – Practice 1
12/03 – 16:25 to 17:10 – Practice 2
12/03 – 17:45 to 19:10 – Qualifying
12/03 – 21:30 to 23:30 – Race

Formula E – Mexico City
12/03 – 21:30 to 23:30 – Race Live (Virgin Media – channel 997)
12/03 – 21:45 to 23:30 – Race Live (BT Sport Europe)
12/03 – 23:15 to 01:15 – Race (ITV4)
13/03 – 09:30 to 10:25 – Highlights (ITV)

IndyCar Series – St. Petersburg (BT Sport//ESPN)
13/03 – 16:30 to 19:30 – Race

As always I will update the schedule if anything changes.

Update on March 11th at 19:40 – Virgin Media will be showing the race live in the channel slot 997 tomorrow evening. The reason for the strange channel number is for Virgin Media customers that do not have access to BT Sport Europe. It will be interesting to see if the programme has the BT Sport Europe DOG. If it does not have BT Sport graphics, then this is a clean feed straight from Formula E, which will be the first time we’ve had that happen for Formula E in the UK. There’s clearly some flexibility in the contract that allows this to happen.