Scheduling: The 2015 Beijing ePrix

As Lewis Hamilton heads towards his third Formula One championship in Austin, over the other side of the world in Beijing, preparations for season two of the Formula E championship are well under way! The season, as it currently stands, will comprise of eleven rounds in ten cities, but if rumours are to be believed, we could see eleven turn to twelve or thirteen any time soon. Already, early announcements are being made for season three, which shows how far the series has come in a short space of time.

The good news for viewers of the series is that the World Feed team remains exactly the same as season one. Jack Nicholls returns as the lead commentator, with Dario Franchitti joining him to provide expert analysis. Nicki Shields remains pit lane reporter. Things remain static for ITV too, as Jennie Gow is back as presenter with Mark Priestley joining her in the studio. Gow will be presenting coverage of Beijing, despite the clash with the Formula 1. Alongside Gow and Priestley for Beijing will be ex Mahindra Racing driver Karun Chandhok. It is important for Formula E to retain personnel for season two, which is why I’m incredibly glad to see the duo of Nicholls and Franchitti continuing (not that it was ever in doubt).

In terms of scheduling, the only change for ITV is that highlights are now being broadcast on their main channel. Even if that is only say 250k more than what the highlights were delivering on ITV4, that is 250k extra new faces and any new face that gets their eyes on the championship at this stage is great news. As for Formula E, I assume the live streaming will continue on their website, but they have been conducting some live stream testing on YouTube recently, which may be an indicator of what is going to happen for Beijing (although this may be for countries without TV deals). Elsewhere, Formula E Holdings have teamed up with Grabyo to deliver clips faster and quicker to social media platforms which will only boost their following.

Whilst this blog is predominantly UK based, it should be mentioned that Formula E have announced a whole host of TV deals recently (such as the Eurosport deal), these deals helping to increase their reach across Europe and the remainder of the world. The overall calendar for season two looks similar to season one, and has been criticised for spacing – but actually the spacing is better than last season. The average gap between races is 28 days compared with 31.9 days for the inaugural season. In season one, two races had a gap of over 50 days between that and the previous race, whereas this season has no races with a gap that big. Some of the gaps are still too big for my liking to be honest, but overall the calendar distribution is more evenly spread out than last season.

If Donington testing is anything to go by, season two should be as good, if not better, than season one. And here, are all the scheduling details for Beijing…

NOTE: Clocks go back one hour on Sunday 25th October, with the change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time. The times listed are for BST on Saturday and before; GMT for Sunday and afterwards…

Formula E – Beijing (online via FIAFormulaE.com)
24/10 – 02:10 to 03:10 – Practice 1
24/10 – 03:25 to 04:10 – Practice 2
24/10 – 04:45 to 06:10 – Qualifying

Formula E – Beijing
24/10 – 08:00 to 10:30 – Race (ITV4)
25/10 – 09:25 to 10:25 – Highlights (ITV)

As always, if anything changes, or if there are any media appearances on the run up to Beijing worth noting, I will update the schedule.

ITV retain Formula E rights

ITV will screen the second season of the FIA Formula E Championship, it has been confirmed.

As with the first season, every race will air live on ITV4, with the season ending London ePrix airing on ITV. In addition, ITV’s main channel will air a highlights programme after every ePrix, presumably on Saturday or Sunday evenings after peak. The deal appears to be a one-year extension, rather than a multi-year deal.

Ali Russell, Director of Media and Strategic Partnerships at Formula E, said: “It’s fantastic news that we are extending our partnership with ITV. The interest and following of Formula E in the UK has been overwhelming, which was evident at the final two rounds in London. We look forward to continue to build Formula E together over the course of the season.” Niall Sloane, Director of Sport at ITV, said: “We are delighted to renew our Formula E deal for next year. The sport is building significantly on a thrilling first year and we look forward to bringing this fresh, innovative and futuristic series to our viewers on ITV and ITV4.”

As of writing, there is no word on who will be presenting the programming, although it assumed that Jennie Gow will be returning to the role with Andy Jaye filling in where necessary. The final round of Formula E’s first season, which saw Nelson Piquet Jnr win the championship, peaked with 1.2 million viewers. It goes without saying that this is fantastic news, but also important for Formula E to grow further in the UK. Season 1 (excluding the London finale) averaged 168k (2.2%), peaking with 285k (3.4%), so hopefully season two’s numbers grow on the base already established.

I’m hopeful that the highlights programming may be strategically placed depending on the race is, for example it may be better to show Beijing and Putrajaya in an earlier slot potentially on Saturday afternoon or early evening, if the contract allows that. From ITV’s side, I hope the advertising is better as it seemed to completely disappear after the first round or two, never reappearing until London.

News round-up: Formula E expands European reach; Questing not coasting

There have not been too many major news stories in the broadcasting landscape to report on recently, but there have been a few intriguing issues bubbling under the surface worth mentioning on the blog.

Formula E expands European reach, but UK deal remains a mystery
It was confirmed today that Eurosport would be broadcasting seasons two and three exclusively of Formula E in Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, with the channel also broadcasting non-exclusive content in Iceland. The announcement is significant, as it allows Formula E to reach far more people than what it currently does in those territories, thanks to the Germany deal being a free-to-air one. Ali Russell, Formula E’s Director of Media and Strategic Partnership said that the deal “reinforces our outreach across key target markets in Europe alongside other existing deals.”

Whilst significant, the news is not necessarily surprising. As noted previously, Eurosport are owned by Discovery Communications who have a minority investment in Formula E. It is important to state that Eurosport’s Formula E deal does not cover the UK as, to quote Ben Constanduros, there are other deals in place which prevent it. As of writing, nothing has been publicly announced regarding where Formula E’s second season will be broadcast in the UK. 60 percent of you think ITV will broadcast season two live. We continue to wait for an official announcement on the situation.

WEC and WTCC gain UK free-to-air coverage
Good news for UK fans of the World Endurance Championship and the World Touring Car Championship, free to air highlights of both series are coming. Continuing the same theme as above, Quest TV, who are under the same umbrella as Eurosport and therefore Discovery, will begin airing a one-hour show with immediate effect.

The WEC programme will be presented by Toby Moody, airing on the Tuesday after each race weekend. The first WTCC highlights show aired last night and is currently available to watch on Quest On Demand, presented by Neil Cole. The development follows Quest TV’s successful coverage of the 24 Hours of Le Mans earlier this year. This is only good news for both championships, as it allows them to increase their foothold and bring in a bigger audience. I won’t be surprised if Formula E highlights turn up on Quest for season two, even if the live action is covered elsewhere. Anything that increases a motor sport series audience is good news in my view.

BT’s MotoGP ratings bounce back
A thrilling two rounds of MotoGP from Silverstone and Misano resulted in mixed viewing figures on BT Sport, overnight viewing figures showed. Silverstone peaked with 209k (2.3%), only marginally up on last year’s number of 205k (2.4%). Bank Holiday was the main reason for that number, however it was still a slight surprise when you consider that the trend so far this year has been of increases on a significant scale.

Misano fared much better than Silverstone, averaging 242k (2.8%) from 12:30 to 14:00, peaking with 317k (3.6%) at 13:40. A sign of how well Misano did is that this year’s MotoGP average is higher than last year’s peak number of 211k (2.6%). I would have expected Scott Redding and Bradley Smith’s podium finishes, along with the inclement weather, to boost ITV4’s highlights number. What we actually saw was a year-on-year drop. An average audience of 335k (1.5%) watched ITV4’s programme this past Monday, compared with 357k (1.6%) for last year’s Misano highlights programme.

Elsewhere…
Formula 1 celebrates one year of having a proper Twitter account this weekend with the Singapore Grand Prix. Technically, the F1 account on Twitter has been live since August 2009, but the proper interaction that you would actually expect from an account began last September. In the past year, their reach on Twitter has increased 62 percent from 937k to 1.52m, a fairly hefty jump, overtaking MotoGP in the process.

Over in America, great news for the IndyCar Series which witnessed a 70 percent jump in NBC Sports Network’s numbers between 2014 and 2015. Some of that has to be natural growth, but there is another part which is no doubt a result of piggybacking off Formula 1’s recent success over there. It’ll be interesting to see how much influence Alexander Rossi has on viewing figures. Okay, he is unlikely to trouble the points scores given the car he is in, but it may move NBC’s F1 numbers up further a notch or two.

Poll: Will ITV broadcast season two of Formula E live?

Formula E testing from Donington Park has come and gone. Now, the long journey begins for the 40 cars to head to Beijing in time for the 2015-16 season opener on Saturday 17th October.

On the track, many questions remain about the pecking order, and these questions will not be answered until the first qualifying session of the season has finished. Off the track however, one question remains for UK readers. Who will be broadcasting season two of Formula E? As of writing, nothing has been officially confirmed. The most likely outcome is that ITV will continue to screen live coverage. Mentions of Formula E remain in ITV Sport’s Twitter bio, whilst ITV’s Formula E website has been giving testing updates over the past few weeks, although there was no ITV presence at Donington. So, why has there been no official announcement? I think there are three main reasons.

The first potentially contentious point surrounds whether a London ePrix will take place next June. As noted previously, the London ePrix weekend is taken up by the British Grand Prix. AUTOSPORT says that an early July slot is likely, but that’s yet to be made official. Were the London ePrix to be dropped, then this makes Formula E less attractive to UK broadcasters, given that the big season finale would instantly disappear from their radar. A peak audience of 1.2 million viewers watched the season finale on ITV’s main channel, a point Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag emphasises in his AUTOSPORT interview.

The second stumbling block is money. In order to get Formula E on free-to-air television for its inaugural season, I imagine ITV paid peanuts to broadcast it. It was an unknown entity, nobody knew what was going to happen. Now that we’re heading into season two, it is not unreasonable to expect that Formula E may well want a few more pounds off ITV in order to broadcast the series. If the figure ITV wants to pay and the figure Formula E thinks it should get are not in the same ballpark, that could be the source of some contention. Okay, this is mostly conjecture, but new motor sport series live and die off money, whether we like it or not. An extra million off ITV could be vital for Formula E’s health in the long term, however the investment off Liberty Global and Discovery Communications is believed to help Formula E enormously.

The third issue is pay-TV. I doubt Sky Sports would be interested, they have Formula 1, GP2 and GP3 for single-seater action. Formula E would add nicely to BT Sport’s portfolio, bearing in mind that the channel did show delayed highlights last season. However, the biggest link for me is between Formula E and British Eurosport. Eurosport are owned by Discovery Communications who, as mentioned above, have a minority investment in Formula E. I think, this early in its life cycle, it would be an absurd move to put Formula E live on pay-TV, and it would go smack in the face of Formula E’s ethos to be accessible to the public. I don’t think ITV4’s numbers for Formula E were big enough to attract major pay-TV interest, that could change though in the future if Formula E stayed on ITV to an increased number of viewers.

As of August 6th, an ITV spokesperson told this blog that the 2015/16 broadcast rights were still “to be decided.” In reality, I would be surprised if an agreement is not announced between ITV and Formula E soon. Last year’s deal was announced in March. But until that time comes, there is always a chance that another broadcaster could swoop exclusive live rights to Formula E.

Update on September 8th – No news to report publicly. Provisional schedules for the week commencing Saturday 17th October are released on Thursday 1st October. We should hear something before then, I’d be really surprised if we don’t.

Update on September 9th – Looks like we have an extra week to play with now that Beijing is on Saturday 24th October.

An afternoon at Donington

My latest exploits sent me to Donington Park for an afternoon of Formula E testing. Blog readers may remember that I went to Silverstone last year to watch the opening round of the World Endurance Championship. I may not have watched any actual racing on Monday, but the day was still enjoyable, albeit for different reasons compared to Silverstone. Monday marked day three of six of the Formula E testing season, and with free entry, it was a fairly easy decision to head up to Donington (and to use a day of annual leave, he says). In the days before the test, I did ask a few non motor sport fans what they thought of Formula E, given that they knew that I liked it and was going to the test. One pointed out that Formula E isn’t Formula E “without the EJ”, a reference to Formula E’s music. Another, who watched the London ePrix on TV, liked the use of the battery graphics and how it played into the strategy of the race, a point I made during the lunch break to Formula E commentator Jack Nicholls (more on that later).

On arrival, I didn’t anticipate the size of the queue considering it was testing. I did use the moment to get a look at the demographic that had turned out. Walking around it was quite clear that there was a real mix of people, from kids experiencing their first sight of motor sport to those who had been to the circuit year in, year out. It was great to see families in their droves there, especially during the pit walk. I’d estimate around 2,000 people were there on Monday, not that the number really matters, the main thing is that Formula E successfully engaged with the fans that did attend, which they did. Whilst the gap between testing and race one is long, you can see the benefits of holding the tests during the school holidays in order to get a broader demographic attending. I didn’t speak to fans as I walked around the circuit, but you got the feeling that for some of them, even older people, it was their first time here.

Sam Bird in the Virgin tackles the chicane on day three of Formula E testing at Donington Park.

The only place I could start was by heading up towards the Melbourne Loop. Comparing Formula E with different forms of motor sport is difficult. You walk into most motor sport events, and you know the sound will blow you away, as the 6 Hours of Silverstone did last year. Formula E gives you a different sensation. Whilst the sound of the cars did not make the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, it did bring a different element to proceedings. Readers who have watched Formula E on television will notice how you can hear every squeal, and a multitude of different sounds as the drivers tackle the machinery. The same is true here. The rumble across the kerbs on the exit of Melbourne Loop was one example, or the locking of the brakes into the hairpin, as many drivers experienced on Monday afternoon.

As I did at Silverstone, you can not go to a motor sport event or test day without taking a stroll down pit lane. I was surprised, again, at the size of the queue given that it was £5 to get in, but it was fantastic to see the interest that people had. Being alone did give me the freedom to stroll down the pit lane, which may have been a slight mistake, because what followed in the half hour was a series of ‘selfies’ with multiple drivers: Bruno Senna, Nick Heidfeld and Nelson Piquet, Jr to name a few. Don’t worry, I won’t republish the selfies here! Alongside the selfies, I did chat to Formula E commentator Jack Nicholls (thankfully we made contact earlier in the day, so it was not an awkward introduction!). Nicholls was great on the circuit commentary throughout the day… I should probably plug the Donington museum at this point, but I’ll resist. Seriously, it was great to chat to Nicholls, to walk down pit lane and to have a moment with the stars. If anything, it served as a reminder of the fan-friendly nature that Formula E brings, that you can easily get to interact with those in the spotlight. I can’t recommend it enough.

The Mahindra mechanics at work during day three of Formula E testing.

After the lunch break, I briefly went towards the infield section near the Craner Curves. The first thing that stands out is the sheer elevation. The elevation does come across on TV, but that whole sequence looks much more impressive in real life. The only problem is that the Formula E cars probably look the least impressive going through here due to the lack of speed. Which wasn’t surprising at all, but it did mean that I went back towards the Melbourne Loop and The Esses quicker than I expected. The moment of the afternoon running that I witnessed came from Jacques Villeneuve locking up, and avoiding the Esses chicane altogether, heading towards the gravel trap.

I made the point to Nicholls during the lunch break that Villeneuve could well bring new fans towards Formula E because of his F1 World Champion status, but we shall see whether that really happens or not. I do hope that Formula E grows in stature for season two, but I’m writing this and we still have no news about whether ITV have a contract in place for the forthcoming season, which is concerning. The chicane did draw a crowd into the afternoon, as it is probably the best place to get a good shot, and see Formula E cars at a decent pace. Again, I make the point that you’re unlikely to be blown away from the speed, however the cars in the flesh look like beasts, and something that motor racing cars should look like.

A bit like my day at Silverstone, the sun was rarely spotted, although it did make an appearance before the running began whilst I was queueing up. I’ll avoid making a direct comparison between my day at Silverstone last year and Donington this past Monday, because they’re two completely different kettles of fish – last year was witnessing my first motor race; Donington was Formula E testing. Overall though, Monday was an enjoyable day. I’m glad I decided to go to one of the test days! There are still two more days of testing left, so if you’re free next week I’d strongly recommend heading up to Donington. It is not often you can get hours of enjoyment, for very little cost, and it is an easy way to spend a family day out and entertain the kids.