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.

Mercedes inquiry boosts Sky’s post-race show

The 2015 Italian Grand Prix may not go down as the greatest race ever, but what happened after the race helped boost Sky Sports F1’s post-race show, overnight viewing figures show.

Race
Live coverage of the race, broadcast on Sky Sports F1 from 12:00 to 15:30, averaged 657k (8.5%) with a peak audience of 1.09m (13.5%) coming at 14:15 as Lewis Hamilton claimed victory. Sky’s exclusive numbers are only up 7.5 percent versus 2014’s shared average of 611k (6.0%). Italy is one race where you expect lower numbers, simply because the race is not as long as the likes of Singapore and Monaco, meaning that there is more post-race analysis to fill.

Typically on a day like yesterday you would expect the audience to drift away to below 150k. However, the Mercedes enquiry meant that a specially extended Paddock Live from 15:30 to 17:05 averaged 256k (2.7%), one of the biggest post-race numbers of the season so far. The audience never dropped below 230k until the end of the programme, which clearly shows that there was demand for Sky to stay on air and capture the verdict live. There was very little drop off, 255k (2.4%) were watching Sky’s post-race show when the stewards decision came in at 16:45. I made the point on Twitter that this is exactly what Sky Sports F1 should be doing, and it is fantastic to see the viewing figures support that assertion. You almost need events like that to happen to justify the existence of the F1 channel, if the F1 was on another Sky Sports channel, they would have no doubt gone off air to cover the next sporting event in the schedules.

As for the race itself, I don’t like saying a race is “made for highlights”, but from the BBC’s perspective, Italy is exactly that (although they have, to my surprise, covered 2013 and 2014 live). BBC’s highlights programme averaged 3.23m (23.7%), in-line with their other highlights programming this year, so no surprises there. To prove the “made for highlights” point, the combined average of 3.88m is the highest for Italy since 2012 which averaged 4.37m, albeit the highlights were in a later slot. The viewing figures continue a run of good or solid numbers for Formula 1, however tricky waters lie ahead with the Rugby World Cup on ITV. BBC’s highlights from Singapore will clash with matches in two weeks time, but apart from that the F1 should escape relatively unscathed.

BTCC hurt by F1
Clashing with the F1 hurt the British Touring Car Championship on ITV4. On air from 10:45 to 17:45, the programme averaged 134k (1.6%). The programme average over seven hours may not tell too much, but the peak of 290k (2.8%) at 16:45 is lower than you would expect from a championship which regularly peaks with over 400k. With the World Series by Renault (BT Sport 2), ELMS (Motors TV), Blancpain GT (BT Sport Europe) and British Superbikes (British Eurosport) also airing live yesterday, it is easy to see how small the audience gets fragmented when the F1 is being broadcast.

The 2014 Italian Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.

Belgium draws identical audience year-on-year

The Belgian Grand Prix, won by Lewis Hamilton, drew an identical audience year-on-year, overnight viewing figures show.

Race
Live coverage of the Grand Prix on BBC One, which aired from 12:10 to 15:30, averaged 2.44m (22.5%), peaking with 3.38m (27.5%) at 14:25 as Hamilton won. Last year’s race aired across the same timeslot to an identical audience, albeit a different share: 2.44m (26.4%), with a peak of 3.27m (31.8%) as Daniel Ricciardo won. The trend, the same audience but lower share is repeated over on Sky Sports F1. Their race day show, from 12:00 to 15:30, averaged 470k (4.3%), peaking with 768k (6.2%) at 14:05. Last year’s Sky coverage averaged 475k (5.1%), peaking with 784k (8.3%) at 13:05.

It is not often you get an identical audience year-on-year, let alone an identical channel breakdown. The combined average for 2015 of 2.91m is the same as 2014, and the combined peak of 4.15m is up on the peak of 4.04m. Unfortunately, because the 2015 average is lower than 2014 (2.9065m vs 2.9103m), it does mean that the 2015 Belgium Grand Prix now holds the unwanted statistic of being the lowest rated European round since the 2008 European Grand Prix. That race went up against the Olympic Games closing ceremony from Beijing.

There are multiple reasons though why I don’t think Belgium’s numbers are anything to worry about. Alongside the warm weather, Belgium was up against a lot of sporting opposition. Premier League football on Sky Sports would have taken away a chunk of the audience, and The Ashes cricket no doubt played a factor as well. The biggest opposition though came from Usain Bolt running in the 100m final at the World Athletics Championship in Beijing. Screened live on BBC Two, the athletics hit 3m (24.4%) at 14:15. During the same five minute period, the F1 dropped to 3.12m (25.7%), showing the effect that Bolt had, albeit a very short effect given the length of the 100m race!

Looking ahead, the Italian Grand Prix in two weeks time should bring in a good number. It is a highlights race, and as we saw with 2012, should draw a big number in comparison to previous years.

The 2014 Belgian Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.

UK F1 TV viewing figures rise, but Sky hit the skids

It has been a promising start to the 2015 Formula One season in the UK, with TV viewing figures recording an increase of eight percent compared with the first half of 2014, unofficial overnight viewing figures show. The figures have been boosted by better scheduling decisions, along with closer racing heading into the Summer break.

> BBC viewing figures increase 12 percent
> Sky slides to record low
> Combined numbers up on 2012 and 2014, but down on 2013

For newer readers to the blog, it is worth mentioning what the figures cover. All the figures in this post are BARB overnight viewing figures. BBC’s viewing figures are for their entire programme, irrespective of whether it ran 160 minutes or 190 minutes. Sky’s viewing figures are for the three and a half hour slot from 12:00 to 15:30, or equivalent. The pay-TV broadcaster opted to split their race day programming into four blocks, the numbers for Sky Sports that I report on this site covers the Pit Lane Live and Race Show segments and are all weighted averages. Sky’s figures also include any simulcasts that have occurred. For the avoidance of doubt, the last four races have been simulcast on Sky Sports 1: Canada, Austria, Britain and Hungary.

To the contrary, online viewing is not included. Only Sky will know how many people are watching Formula 1 via Sky Go, similarly the same can be said for BBC iPlayer, although some figures are released into the public domain for the latter, which I’ve summarised below. All comparisons are for the first half of each season. 2015’s half way figure includes Hungary, as it was round 10 of 19. 2014’s half way analysis did not include Hungary, as it was round 11 of 19.

The 2015 story
Beginning with Sky Sports F1, their race day programming from 12:00 to 15:30 has averaged 657k. As mentioned, that number includes Sky Sports 1 simulcasts. It is the lowest number since the channel has launched. The previous lowest was for the first half of the 2013 season, which averaged 724k. The 2015 number is down 15.3 percent on the first half of 2012, down 9.3 percent on 2013, and down 11.9 percent on 2014. You don’t need to know a lot about viewing figures to realise that the numbers are grim for Sky. Only three races have increased year-on-year for the broadcaster – Spain (up 5.0 percent due to exclusivity), Austria (up 4.3 percent) and Britain (up 27.0 percent due to no Wimbledon clash). All the other races have dropped, in some cases by fairly sizeable proportions.

The substantial drop for Sky is surprising given that at the end of 2014, I was reporting the highest figures since channel launch for the broadcaster. Quoting from that post, I said: “It will be intriguing to see if Sky can continue the upwards swing heading into 2015, or whether BBC can claw back a few viewers off Sky that they have lost during 2014.” It is difficult to say exactly why the audiences have dropped, although I think the negative publicity that Formula 1 faced at the beginning of 2015 could be attributed to it. Sky’s numbers are also affected by the earlier start times for Australia, Malaysia and China, all three of which dropped year-on-year, although you would expect same day timeshift to make up the drop in figures.

Where Sky have dropped, BBC have gained. Their average audience has increased by 12 percent, up from 3.12m to 3.51m. 2015’s number is down though on 2013’s first half average number of 3.81m, which was influenced by the “multi 21” controversy, alongside the German Grand Prix highlights show directly following the final of Wimbledon. BBC’s figures so far this season are good. Luck has come their way compared with previous years: the removal of the German Grand Prix meant that BBC have three live races in a row, whilst the crew have also covered both of the surprise Ferrari victories live this season.

Only one race has recorded a lower audience on the BBC compared with last year, that being the Spanish Grand Prix which the broadcaster screened as a highlights programme versus live in 2014. Every other race has increased, which shows that, even in Sky’s fourth season, free-to-air is still king. Sky should be attempting to make in-roads into BBC’s audiences, but that is not happening, meaning that they are in turn failing to entice new people on-board.

Online and other viewing
As I have said before, tracking online viewing is incredibly difficult due to the nature of the beast. However, that is set to change soon. It was announced by BARB last month that they would be releasing the TV Player Report from September in beta. The report will provide “official figures on the level of viewing to on-demand and live-streamed content through online TV Player apps.” The report should give us a better indication of the broader picture regarding online viewing. I would expect some mentions of sporting events, depending on the size and shape of the weekly reports.

In terms of Sky Go, Sky say that it is now available in six million households.As I alluded to earlier, that figure means nothing without further detail. Just because it is available in six million households, it doesn’t mean that those six million households are using it regularly, let alone watching sports content. Over on the BBC TV, the Malaysian Grand Prix attracted 553k requests, Bahrain had 466k requests. As the BBC files show, the numbers include those that watched the live streams as well as On Demand afterwards. The highest number of requests that an F1 show has ever received on BBC iPlayer is 662k for the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix (although that is down to the circumstances involved). Aside from that, F1 has settled into the half a million requests region for iPlayer requests. If F1 is getting around that number on iPlayer, it is fair to assume that Sky Go’s numbers for Formula 1 struggle to hit 100k.

Combined audience and final thoughts
The combined TV average at the halfway stage of 2015 is 4.16m, an increase of 12 percent on 2014’s halfway figure of 3.87m. The viewing figures so far for 2015 are also up on 2012, but are down on 2013’s halfway average audience of 4.53m. Overall, the viewing figures so far have been really good, although admittedly as I have mentioned above, the BBC gets the majority of the credit for the increase. The TV viewing figures will be slightly below those recorded from between 2009 and 2011 when BBC covered the coverage exclusively, but when you include the online audience on BBC iPlayer, 2015 will not be that far behind 2011’s numbers. Working out the exact amount is impossible for a variety of reasons, but F1 2015 stands up well in comparison.

It is a very significant turnaround compared to this time last year, when I was reporting the lowest viewing figures for TV since 2008. The climb can be attributed to better scheduling, a lack of opposition this Summer, as well as a British driver being on top. However, the figures may be a surprise considering all but the last two races before the Summer break were mediocre in nature. Either way, anyone hoping that Formula 1’s viewing figures were going to drop will probably be left disappointed by the latest set of numbers. The only viewing figures that are dropping are Sky’s, a fact that they will be looking to turn around significantly in the latter half of 2015.

With reference to the 15 minute reach figures, a BBC spokesperson said “We’re delighted that our Formula 1 TV coverage continues to go from strength to strength with 1m more people watching our coverage compared to at this stage in 2014. It’s been a fantastic season so far and we look forward to bringing audiences the thrilling action of F1 for the remainder of 2015.” Sky did not respond within the timeframe to a request for comment concerning the viewing figures. If Sky do comment on the figures in the forthcoming days, I will amend this article.

Hungarian Grand Prix soars to best number since 2011

An adrenaline filled Hungarian Grand Prix, won by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, helped the race hit its highest number since 2011, unofficial overnight viewing figures show.

Race
Live coverage of the race, broadcast live on BBC One from 12:15 to 15:15, averaged a strong 3.87m (32.5%), peaking with 4.97m (36.8%) at 14:45. It is BBC’s highest number for Hungary since 2011, perhaps unsurprising given the fact that they have only covered Hungary in highlights form in recent years. Nevertheless, it is another reminder that live action does draw viewers, and that viewers do prefer watching something live – if they have the choice. Over on Sky Sports F1, their live coverage from 12:00 to 15:30 averaged 625k (5.3%), peaking with 830k (6.1%). Including the simulcast on Sky Sports 1, those numbers rise to 745k (6.3%), with a peak of 1.00m (7.4%), again at 14:45.

The combined average of 4.61m is the third highest on record, since at least the late 1990s. In recent times, 2009 averaged 4.81m (42.5%), whilst 2011 averaged 4.65m (42.2%), both slightly higher than 2015. The combined peak of 5.98m (44.2%) as Vettel won the race yesterday compares extremely well, only behind 2011’s peak audience of 6.10m (50.0%). It is no surprise that all of the highest peaks this year have been recorded when BBC are covering the race live, and all of those peaks have been in the six million viewer ballpark. I think I should underline that the Hungarian round has traditionally rated well with viewers, the last time the race rated under 4 million viewers was 2008.

The great number from Hungary, combined with some recent solid audiences, means that the 2015 Formula One season is currently 8 percent up year on year. I’ll have more analysis in a few weeks time, but the numbers bode well heading into the latter half of the season.

The 2014 Hungarian Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.