Formula E unveils television team

Formula E have today confirmed their television team that will be at every round of the inaugural season. The series in the UK will air exclusively live on ITV4 from September.

Nicki Shields, presenter of Channel 5’s The Gadget Show, will present the World Feed coverage, whilst also roving the pit lane during the race. Part-time BBC Radio 5 Live F1 commentator and Blancpain Sprint Series commentator Jack Nicholls will be in the commentary box alongside former IndyCar Series champion and three time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti. Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn will present a series of technical features on their YouTube channel.

Speaking to Formula E’s official website, Franchitti said: “It is no secret that I have a passion for the history and evolution of motorsports. To be on the team that will now cover an exciting new racing category is a great honour and I can’t wait to see how the Formula E cars perform when the lights go out in Beijing.” Ali Russell, Marketing Director, added: “We’re delighted to be unveiling our host TV commentary team today which we believe ensures fans have the complete range of expertise to guide them through the championship from scientists and technology experts to experienced motorsport commentators and legendary drivers.”

A mix of motor sport experience and enthusiasts where the line-up is concerned. Given that this is meant to be a ‘green’ racing series, it makes perfect sense for them to get some people outside of the motor sport circles on board for their coverage. Given that Aurora Media have done the Goodwood coverage in the past, which Shields has been a part of, it shouldn’t be too surprising to see her present the World Feed, but a good move nevertheless for the reasons noted above. It’ll be interesting to see how it translates to on-screen for ITV4, one assumes that on the basis that paid very, very little for it, that they will just take the World Feed. To be fair, it makes broadcasters’ jobs easier by having a presenter on the World Feed as it means that all they need to do is take the feed and not much else.

News round-up: Motorsport Tonight; BTCC on-board; Formula E

Some bits of news today (not of an April Fools nature!) and the past few days worth mentioning which I have summarised below.

The first bit of news is that BT Sport are debuting a new motor sport show. Entitled ‘Motorsport Tonight’, it will be presented by Abi Griffiths, and will première tonight at 20:00, filling the gaps when MotoGP Tonight is not airing. Tonight’s episode will feature John Watson and Guy Smith talking about the Blancpain GT Series amongst other segments. Whilst that is all great, at time of writing, we’re about two hours before the first broadcast.

Can anyone explain to me why this hasn’t been promoted? If it wasn’t for a tweet by Ben Constanduros this afternoon, I wouldn’t have known about it! It seems to be a common problem, and it sadly is not isolated to BT Sport: broadcasters debut new programmes and fail to promote them. Just yesterday I mentioned the IndyCar Series on ESPN (under the BT Sport banner), which falls under this category. Why air live and/or original programming if you’re not going to bother giving it promotion? I don’t know why it hasn’t been promoted, and to be honest I don’t understand the logic behind it whatsoever. It doesn’t matter how cheap it may be to show, the fact is you are showing it, therefore you should promote it. Otherwise, why bother? It frustrates me.

Whilst I praised Formula One Management (FOM) last week for the improvements to the official F1 App, one area that another series appears to have got the upper hand on is concerning the quality of the on-board footage. Several tweeters pointed out that the British Touring Car Championship on-board cameras from this past Sunday are now in high definition. I haven’t yet had time to watch the races yet from Sunday, but I approve in any improvements in broadcast quality, so this is definitely a good thing. As always with anything in broadcasting, there are people behind these improvements, so credit here goes to Videosys Broadcast for the design and Cloudbass Graphics for implementing it.

Lastly, this week’s TV Sports Markets magazine contains some quotes from Formula E’s CEO Alejandro Agag. The piece notes that the deal with ITV4, announced last month, is only for the first season, and that ITV Sport paid very little money to screen it. Agag says “We have other interested parties on the pay side, but we wanted it to be free to air. So we want to give priority to that but then be able to re-evaluate it.” The fact that ITV did not pay much money for it doesn’t surprise me. At the moment, the series has no value and is unproven. Only after the first season will we see how much value it is to ITV, although I don’t think we will see any races on ITV’s main channel, the last time any motor sport was aired live on ITV1, as it was back then, was Formula 1 in 2008. If Formula E does move to pay, it will sink, in my view irrespective of whether it is one, two or five years from now, unless it turns into a massive hit. Any pay TV deal needs a terrestrial counter part. We shall see what happens, but that is a long, long way into the future.

ITV4 to screen inaugural Formula E season

ITV4 is to screen the inaugural Formula E season exclusively live, it has been confirmed. The championship confirmed that the channel will be screening all ten rounds live, and more importantly where the success of the series is confirmed, free to air. The dates of the ten rounds are as follows, all on Saturdays, UK time listed:

– China (Beijing) – September 13th, 2014 – 09:00
– Malaysia (Putrajaya) – November 22nd, 2014 – 08:00
– Uruguay (Punta del Este) – December 13th, 2014 – 18:00
– Argentina (Buenos Aires) – January 10th, 2015 – 19:00
– tba – February 14th, 2015 – tba
– USA (Miami) – March 14th, 2015 – 20:00
– USA (Los Angeles) – April 4th, 2015 – 00:00
– Monaco – May 9th, 2015 – 15:00
– Germany (Berlin) – May 30th, 2015 – 15:00
– United Kingdom (London) – June 27th, 2015 – 16:00

Ali Russell, Chief Marketing Officer at Formula E, said: “We’re delighted to be announcing this partnership with ITV today and to be securing live, free-to-air coverage of all Formula E races for our UK fans – of which we’re confident there will be many. The UK is widely considered the home of motor sport and a very important market for Formula E. As such, with its unrivalled commitment to motor sport, ITV provides the perfect platform to showcase our new fully-electric series – which will also be racing in London in June 2015 – and to appeal to a new generation of motor sport fans.”

ITV’s coverage will contain a pre-race build-up with practice and qualifying highlights along with post-race reaction and the podium, all in a 90 minute standalone programme. Given that the races are set to last an hour, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for manoeuvre, but I suspect things can be extended if necessary. I’m not sure how the Saturday slots will do from a ratings point of view, but three races are in primetime later this year so I’ll be fascinated if they can get near to a million viewers potentially. Niall Sloane, ITV’s Director of Sport said: “I’m delighted ITV4 will be able to bring viewers the opportunity to see this innovative new series – which promises top-level open-wheel racing with the iconic backdrops of some of the world’s most famous cities. The coverage of this series adds another new dimension to ITV4’s motor sport portfolio.”

Even though I am unsure that the electric formula will appeal to me, this is simply fantastic news for motor sport fans. I’ve made several comments about ITV4 and motor sport, but in my opinion, this cements ITV4 as the home of motor sport. And its brilliant news for Formula E too, dare I say a coup. It was reported back in December that BT Sport and BSkyB were in the running to screen the series. I’m happy that hasn’t happened. Because if it did happen, Formula E would have sunk without trace. This news gives Formula E a big platform to start with and the potential to build from there. AUTOSPORT says that the highlights will be shared with a pay-TV channel, not that it particularly matters at this stage given the ITV4 news.

It will be interesting to see what happens with regards a potential line-up, whether ITV Sport add their touch, as alluded to above, or whether they will just take the main Formula E feed. ITV4’s motor sport portfolio now is as follows:

– Formula E (live)
– British Touring Car Championship (live)
– MotoGP (highlights)
– British Superbikes (highlights)
– World Rally Championship (highlights)

Along with cycling, including the Tour de France. You can’t argue with that, can you? Four wheels, two wheels, tarmac, gravel, ITV4 has it covered. A good news day if you’re a Formula E fan.

Schedule details last updated on September 14th, 2014.

BT Sport vs BSkyB for live Formula E rights?

A lot of people this week have been getting to the blog via various ‘Formula E UK TV rights’ terms, wondering who will be screening the series. Today, we have our first indicator of where the rights could be heading.

Christian Sylt, writing for the Telegraph, is quoting Formula E chief executive Alejandro Agag, who says that they “are talking with BT Sport and with Sky. The strategy in the UK and in Europe is to wait until the drivers are out in February or March then we go for it because we can get more value. The TV people we are talking to absolutely love it. One hour races and they love the pit stop concept because the drivers are going to run. Everybody will have the same distance between their car and the other car. This running, the TV people love it. You can actually have overtaking here. [My ultimate aim is] to do free-to-air even if we get less money. Free-to-air would be great: BBC or ITV.”

Agag in the above mentions that interest will increase once the drivers’ are announced. Unless they pull off a huge coup and, for example purposes, manage to get Michael Schumacher in a car, the rights money in the UK at least won’t budge. Not a muscle. Casual audiences will not be drawn towards ‘F1 rejects’, to coin the term. I really can’t think of many drivers’ alone that could be a draw to UK audiences.

Moving onto free-to-air, I think we can eliminate BBC straight away. ITV or Channel 4 (which Agag hasn’t mentioned)? I don’t think it is likely, but never say never. I’d be really surprised if it happened, and could be quite a risk commercially. Would ITV enter a three year deal for something that may not be guaranteed to last three years? I’m sure A1 Grand Prix wanted free-to-air, but the fact is that it is a huge risk to take into uncharted territory. I think terrestrial television highlights is the more likely option.

BT Sport or Sky Sports will always be king with live sport. Sky Sports would surprise me. They have Formula 1, why would they want Formula E? And then, if they did get it, would they even be allowed to screen it on Sky Sports F1? Would Bernie (or whoever at FOM) block them from screening it on Sky Sports F1? It would definitely go against Martin Turner’s statements in the past about screening non-F1 content on the channel as it would ‘dilute the brand’. Unless something drastic changes in the next six months, Formula E being on Sky Sports is a non starter. I do note though that the term ‘BSkyB’ is used, so whether there could be home for it outside of the Sky Sports portfolio, I don’t know.

I think BT Sport will get it, and in doing so would actually create a strong motor sport brand for them: MotoGP, Formula E and IndyCar, which should entice some motor sport fans. It will be interesting to see what happens, there’s several potential options for them. Of course, it could just end up on Eurosport or Motors TV, which I somehow doubt Agag wants!

Formula E announces first television deal

The FIA’s new Formula E series has announced its first television deal. It involves Fox Sports, which will be broadcasting the series to over 90 countries, including Canada, Australia, Latin America and some European countries. The series, which will run from September 2014 to June 2015, is expected to gain significant publicity leading up to the season due to the use of electrically powered racing cars.

Formula E’s CEO Alejandro Agag told WSJ: “This is a key moment in the history of our young championship. To sign a deal like this over a year before the first race with a global brand of this kind ensures that we make accessible our championship to hundreds of millions of people.”

A UK broadcasting rights deal is expected to be announced as well today. The FIAFormulaE Twitter account has began following @FoxSports, and also @SkySports and @SkySportsNews, so it looks like Sky Sports are odds on to screen the series. It would be their first motor sports acquisition since they won the Formula 1 rights in 2011.

Update at 10:12 on August 9th – Jack Nicholls says on Twitter not to expect a UK broadcasting announcement today.