Motor sport ratings (week ending 20th October, 2013)

Sadly there is not a lot to the motor sport ratings round-up from BARB this week. Motors TV did not report any ratings, whilst the final round of the IndyCar Series failed to make BT Sport 2’s top ten, meaning it had under 12,000 viewers.

The F1 Show recorded one of its lowest figures to date for a studio based edition on Friday 18th October. The figure, the lowest of the year, averaged 18,000 viewers. It was a low week across the channel, only five shows averaged above 10,000 viewers, which is really disastrous overall nearly two years in. I think the mid-week schedule outside of race weekends has to be more structured, because there is absolutely zero flow to the schedules at the moment, it could be described as one programme after the other with no real meaning.

Motor sport ratings (week ending 13th October, 2013)

The British Touring Car Championship was the highlight on BARB this weekend as the series came to a conclusion. The final race day of the season, from 10:45 averaged 364,000 viewers across nearly eight hours on ITV4, a fantastic figure. Last year, the broadcast averaged 318,000 viewers, although the show was 15 minutes longer (in an eight hour broadcast this would have made very little difference to the overall average).

Sadly, not all of the Sky Sports F1 data has been processed properly, meaning not everything is available, but here is what is on the site:

– 212,000 – Live Qualifying (Saturday, 05:00)
=> 117,000 – 05:00 to 06:00
=> 267,000 – 06:00 to 07:45
– 120,000 – First 30 minutes of Race Build-Up (Sunday, 05:30)
– 100,000 – Race Replay (Sunday, 11:30)
– 68,000 – Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 11:00)
– 46,000 – Race Notebook (Sunday, 19:00)
– 44,000 – Qualifying Notebook (Sunday, 19:00)

What is interesting there is that live coverage of Qualifying did better for Japan than Korea, despite the latter being a Sky exclusive weekend which is a bit strange.

No BBC data, with both MotoGP and Formula 1 on the fly-aways, it means that individual airings do not make either BBC One’s or BBC Two’s top 30. Last weeks Broadcast magazine however did overnight ratings of 550,000 (7.6%) for the MotoGP live airing, with 630,000 (5.7%) watching the repeat later on. F1’s Japan overnights can be found here.

Motor sport ratings (week ending 6th October, 2013)

Sky Sports F1’s race day coverage of the Korean Grand Prix averaged 453,000 viewers from 05:30 to 10:15, official ratings from BARB show. Because of the way the TV world works, the rating is split into two. The first half an hour brought 113,000 viewers to the channel up to 06:00, with the remainder averaging 493,000 viewers. When compared to Japan last year, the rating is 100,000 viewers up, so a very good rating there for Sky.

Elsewhere on Sky Sports F1:

– 185,000 – Live Qualifying (Saturday, 05:00)
=> 101,000 – 05:00 to 06:00
=> 233,000 – 06:00 to 07:45
– 84,000 – Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 12:00)
– 74,000 – Race Replay (Sunday, 11:30)
– 52,000 – Qualifying Notebook (Saturday, 14:45)
– 49,000 – Cevert: The Most Exciting Man (Sunday, 10:15)

Nice rating for the Cevert show, and higher than the Alain Prost and Eddie Irvine première editions of F1 Legends, which aired after Italy and Singapore respectively. Nothing from Friday made the top ten, quite surprised to see no practice in there, even a repeat. I guess with the title effectively over, practice becomes even less relevant in the grand scheme of things. Qualifying is slightly up on Japan 2012, but not a lot. You may think that comparing with Japan last year seems fairly invalid, but I explained on Monday the logic behind it here.

Both IndyCar races averaged 9,000 viewers each. Saturday’s race aired live on BT Sport 2, with Sunday’s live on ESPN.

BBC live coverage helps Japan increase year-on-year

The Japanese Grand Prix increased year-on-year, overnight ratings show, but when comparing the Japanese and Korean Grand Prix ratings from 2012 and 2013, an interesting pattern emerges.

Live coverage of the race on BBC One, from 06:00 to 09:15 averaged 1.30 million viewers, recording a 15-minute peak of 1.96 million at 08:15. The re-run at 14:00 averaged 1.92 million viewers. I have not seen Sky Sports F1’s viewing figures, but if last year’s Korean Grand Prix is to go by, then the race programme averaged around about 210,000 viewers.

Japanese Grand Prix – Official Ratings
2004 – 2.86 million
2005 – 3.32 million
2006 – 2.87 million
2007 – 3.17 million
2008 – 3.14 million
2009 – 3.63 million
2010 – 3.70 million
2011 – 4.38 million
2012 – 2.76 million / 2.88 million (using ‘35 percent theory‘)
– overnight figures were ~2.70 million / 2.80 million
2013 – 3.42 million / 3.50 million (overnight rating)

Japan has always been one of the lowest rated races on the calendar, as seen above only one race in the past ten years has averaged over 4 million viewers. When you consider that the title race is almost over, I’d say yesterday did respectably. Not great, but not appalling either. An interesting comparison, and why I have called the title what I have, is comparing BBC non-live for Japan 2012 and Korea 2013 with BBC live for Korea 2012 and Japan 2013:

– BBC live: 3.18 million / 3.42 million (JPN 2012 / KOR 2013)
– BBC non-live: 2.76 million / 2.84 million (KOR 2012 / JPN 2013)

Does this mean a good half a million people for the Asian races just read the result and not bother to tune in if BBC are not showing it live? I don’t know, but thought it was an interesting little tidbit worth bringing up. It may well be viewers hanging over who usually watch BBC Breakfast, but who knows.

Over on ITV, ‘Senna‘ averaged 1.09 million viewers at 22:20 for its première airing. The timeslot restricted its numbers badly with it going on beyond midnight. Promotion from ITV was appalling too, I didn’t see any adverts for the film, sadly. My initial thought that the slot was good turned out to be wrong, and it seems like it could have got double or triple the audience in a 21:00 slot on BBC Two. Expect it to be repeated frequently on ITV4, and film repeats on ITV4 tend to do well. ITV have the exclusive terrestrial rights to Universal films, so don’t expect it to turn up on other terrestrial channels.

The 2012 Japanese Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.

Motor sport ratings (week ending 29th September, 2013)

MotoGP may have been the main motor sport event during the last weekend of September, but the coverage on BBC Two failed to make BARB‘s Top 30, official viewing figures show (or in MotoGP’s case, don’t). The race programme, from Aragón, averaged less than 1.09 million viewers on BBC Two.

Also failing to make the charts was coverage of the British Touring Car Championship, which averaged less than 218,000 viewers. The Goodwood Revival 2013 fared better on Thursday evening, also on ITV4, with 254,000 viewers or 283,000 viewers if you wish to include the +1 equivalent. Staying with the classic theme, and two archive programmes made BBC Four’s top ten. Grand Prix: The Killer Years averaged 535,000 viewers, whilst a repeat of Hunt vs Lauda: F1’s Greatest Racing Rivals averaged 409,000 viewers.

Over on Sky Sports F1, The F1 Show averaged 37,000 viewers or 74,000 viewers across three airings. Pretty disappointing, as it was one of their better efforts this year with Nigel Roebuck in the studio. For anyone wondering where the Korean Grand Prix ratings report is, as of writing no ratings have been reported. I am hopeful, that Broadcast’s top 100 in their magazine this week will include the relevant ratings, so hopefully a report is coming later in the week.