Poll: Chinese Grand Prix 2019, Shanghai - Race 3/21

[The_Abyss]

Some of this is accurate, but only up to a point.

Seriously, pay to view massively massively increased their revenue and Liberty have literally zero interest in making it free to view, they want to get out of the pay to view deals they currently have so they can get everyone to pay them directly and cut out the middle men.

What pays more, say 5 million viewers on free to view on a station that can afford to pay say 200million a year to win the rights, or 2 million viewers on a pay to view channel where the pay to view company can afford to pay 400million a year.

It sounds reasonable at that point.

Viewers don't mean anything, profit does. half the views paying 3 times as much is vastly better for them.

And that's where it begins to fall down. Not necessarily at those numbers, but at the statement that viewers don't mean anything.

For the broadcaster, they mean everything, as that's how they can price and sell their advertising positions.

For the sponsors and the participating teams, they're incredibly important as that's the available audience for their brand exposure.

Why isn't football on free to view, more people would watch it, but they'd make less money. In the mid 00s when the money for going pay to view would drastically increase revenue (iirc in basically a financial crash and when cigarette money leaving the sport F1 revenue went up 30-40%) was the only move, streaming and then having their own channels wasn't a viable option. Today they have started a streaming service but it's not available in any countries with existing exclusive tv rights.

Liberty want existing deals to expire, to get everyone on streaming and then with an account having a channel available on say Sky/virgin to access what you already pay for same as BT sport. Then probably add viewers by letting BBC/ITV broadcast it on a delay.

Yep, I don't disagree with that. It relegates the likes of Sky to an aggregated broadcast platform. Sky, Amazon, Netflix etc know this too, which is why they're all investing heavily in content as well. Sport stands alone though - it isn't as easy to buy and then own to create the content. That's where Liberty Media have taken a bold step and why, hopefully, they should very much care about getting the product right.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

What is the reason for less viewers when it switched to sky?

It is no worse then other sports being on sky like football which is still very popular?

If you love f1 you will try and watch it regardless if it is on sky, bbc, or even BT??

Nah, I would rather manscape with a belt sander than pay to watch Brundle flap his gums.

 

[Mr Jack]

Seriously, pay to view massively massively increased their revenue and Liberty have literally zero interest in making it free to view, they want to get out of the pay to view deals they currently have so they can get everyone to pay them directly and cut out the middle men.

Pay to view is eating your seed corn. Yes, for a short period of time you can make more profits but at the price of killing your future audiences and crushing the value of advertising in your sport. Cricket has undergone the same thing, and finally has begun to realise the terrible mistake they have made. Even worse, it's a hard problem to reverse, since it's hard to persuade broadcasters to carry your sport in prime spots when the audience isn't there.

There are very few sports that can get away with pay-to-view, and even those need the value of their biggest ticket events being on free-to-view. Even Football would start to see audiences dwindle if they stopped getting the huge audience boost from the England games.

 

[mmj_uk]

What is the reason for less viewers when it switched to sky?

It is no worse then other sports being on sky like football which is still very popular?

If you love f1 you will try and watch it regardless if it is on sky, bbc, or even BT??

I've got the Sky F1 channel and I don't even make the effort to watch it, I'd rather just watch the Channel 4 highlights that are aired at better times and cut out all of the dross. I've only got the Sky F1 channel because it comes bundled in with Sky Sports.

I think the problem is that "love of F1" is at an all time low, I've expressed what I dislike about modern F1 lots of times and it just keeps on getting worse not better. It's bizarre the way they've dumbed the down the sport down so much to appeal to the masses (and isolate long term/racing purist fans such as me) and then gone subscription only which the masses aren't going to tune in to anyway.

Like Abyss says advertising revenue/sponsors is a huge part of F1 as a business, which is probably the reason why today they have so many stupid run off areas (dumbing F1 down, making it too easy for drivers which I hate) to stop cars from retiring, so that being the case then why take a guillotine to your potential viewers by going subscription only in the first place.

 

[jonneymendoza]

I've got the Sky F1 channel and I don't even make the effort to watch it, I'd rather just watch the Channel 4 highlights that are aired at better times and cut out all of the dross.

I think the problem is that "love of F1" is at an all time low, I've expressed what I dislike about modern F1 lots of times and it just keeps on getting worse not better. It's bizarre the way they've dumbed the down the sport down so much to appeal to the masses (and isolate long term/purist fans such as me) and then gone subscription only which the masses aren't going to tune in to anyway.

So it is not really the issue about pay per view but more about the actual sport itself and how it has changed

 

[mmj_uk]

So it is not really the issue about pay per view but more about the actual sport itself and how it has changed

It's changed (for the worse) to appeal to the masses but at the same time turned its nose up at the masses by going off free to air. If it had gone subscription only to preserve its tradition I could understand it but they've isolated everyone I think.

 

[jonneymendoza]

It's changed (for the worse) to appeal to the masses but at the same time turned its nose up at the masses by going off free to air. If it had gone subscription only to preserve its tradition I could understand it but they've isolated everyone I think.

Would numbers still have dropped if it was all on BBC?

 

[duc999]

Personally I think the numbers would be far less after the initial novelty factor has worn off. As a sport its just not exciting anymore to the masses. F1 enthusiasts will defend it to the death but its become spectacle over substance. Totally out of touch with people to the point of being snobby, massive spending, characterless teams, drivers and very predictable results.

 

[mmj_uk]

Would numbers still have dropped if it was all on BBC?

No idea but they need to decide what audience they want and commit to them, if they want to be WWE on wheels with circuits that forgive and sometimes even reward driving errors (eg. missing braking and cutting corners, running wide and just accelerating on run offs), with overtaking buttons to give commentators something to scream and shout about every lap, which the sport is now, then it would be better in my opinion to be free to air. If they decide to make F1 an elite racing sport again which will probably carry a narrower but more commited audience then a subsciption model might be beneficial.

 

[drunkenmaster]

And that's where it begins to fall down. Not necessarily at those numbers, but at the statement that viewers don't mean anything.

For the broadcaster, they mean everything, as that's how they can price and sell their advertising positions.

For the sponsors and the participating teams, they're incredibly important as that's the available audience for their brand exposure.

Actually no, those points make no difference. The fact is F1 sponsorship is much more associated with high end brands. Who is more likely to buy a lets say Tag Heuer watch, the person only watching because it's free on BBC, or the person who is spending 500 a year to watch F1 through Sky?

Sponsors don't care about number of people watching either, they care about WHO is watching. People who can afford overpriced Sky subscriptions are more valuable per viewer to everyone, to F1 itself in getting a bigger tv deal, to Sky, to sky's advertisers and to the sponsors.

Money is what matters in every sense, to F1 and to sponsors. Putting sponsorship onto a program viewed by a more well off audience is more valuable to brands who have more expensive products.

If people are paying 5x as much to get the tv rights, as Sky might be, they are almost certainly charging 5x the advertising costs and sponsors are happier doing that knowing they have a more focused, richer audience.

 

[The_Abyss]

Actually no, those points make no difference. The fact is F1 sponsorship is much more associated with high end brands. Who is more likely to buy a lets say Tag Heuer watch, the person only watching because it's free on BBC, or the person who is spending 500 a year to watch F1 through Sky?

Sponsors don't care about number of people watching either, they care about WHO is watching. People who can afford overpriced Sky subscriptions are more valuable per viewer to everyone, to F1 itself in getting a bigger tv deal, to Sky, to sky's advertisers and to the sponsors.

Money is what matters in every sense, to F1 and to sponsors. Putting sponsorship onto a program viewed by a more well off audience is more valuable to brands who have more expensive products.

If people are paying 5x as much to get the tv rights, as Sky might be, they are almost certainly charging 5x the advertising costs and sponsors are happier doing that knowing they have a more focused, richer audience.

They do make a difference because, as with all things, there's a balance. If there wasn't then the sponsors would be happy with nobody other than the Sultan of Oman watching every race.

 

[drunkenmaster]

They do make a difference because, as with all things, there's a balance. If there wasn't then the sponsors would be happy with nobody other than the Sultan of Oman watching every race.

It matters in that if there were only 1/10th the viewers and Sky could only charge advertisers twice as much it wouldn't work out for them, but half the viewers who pay much more works out for everyone involved easily and afaik.

It would take a monumental shift of people stopping watching to make F1 not more economically viable as subscription viewing and again more over Liberty as said aren't interested in going back to free to air, they just see the opportunity now to take back a larger slice of the subscription viewer market by delivering the product to the end user themselves.

Also again as said, revenue went up massively from the move, not tanked and most of the subscription tv deals are working out just fine for those who made them indicating they are making more than enough money to pay for the deal.

Liberty have a product people want and can make way more money charging them more for it than pushing it out on free to air channels that have far lower income from broadcasting, it's really that simple. Free to air is a bad deal for almost all sports unless the sport is basically so unpopular people aren't really going to watch it in large numbers either way.

 

[The_Abyss]

But your argument is let down by the fact that Liberty actively want to grow the audience, not just more effectively monetise a smaller audience. They want to bring more relevant and accessible brand in to sponsor and engage, not the likes of Rolex etc. Liberty have a far greater interest in growing the sport than Sky do, as they control and own so much more of it.

I'm not making an argument for free to air, far from it. Liberty have no place for broadcasters in their model other than in exceptional circumstances when the infrastructure won't support their distribution. I don't have a problem with that - the F1 product isn't good enough for free to air. If it was then with only 20 or so events a year, there'd be 20 million UK viewers tuning in to every race. But there weren't, even with a race in this country, one of the greatest drivers the sport's seen and multiple world champion and the majority of the cars built her with a large chunk of British workers and technology. F1 just isn't good enough to be that mass market, but that doesn't mean it has to be very narrow in its appeal.

 

[drunkenmaster]

I mean I was straight up responding to someone that said pay per view is a bizarre move but Liberty 'seem to get that'. IE, their point was that pay to view was bad, hurt F1 and Liberty obviously want to move back to free to air which is plainly wrong. That is what I'm arguing against.

Obviously more viewers within any give style of delivering the sport is great, I'm only arguing that a huge increase in viewers from going free to air channels isn't what Liberty want and won't actively increase revenue or directly help the sport.

Pay to view has drastically increase the revenue of almost every single sport that went pay to view, basically the only ones it doesn't are the sports people really don't care about. IE you put snooker on BBC2 and people might leave that on during the day instead of watch some soap or some other BS tv, but they won't get a sky subscription just to see snooker the same way they wouldn't to see other filler afternoon shows. Anything where people actively want to watch a sport in reasonable numbers will almost always gain more via pay to view.

More pay to view customers is obviously far better than less pay to view customers and of course Liberty want to increase the number of viewers, so do sky, more people watch it on sky then they can charge advertisers even more and make more profit. Sky have every bit as much to gain from more viewers as Liberty.

But viewers for the sake of viewers isn't worthwhile, growing revenue and income is the key and always will be. If going free to air would increase revenue they'd do that, it won't, which is why they aren't. They've already laid out their next plan which is delivering the content themselves via streaming and almost certainly as their deals with the likes of Sky start to run out in major markets they'll start producing a bigger and bigger F1 show themselves until it's ready to completely replace the Sky F1 production, at that point I'm near certain they will start broadcasting their own channel which they'd make available on Sky and other similar services.

 

[mmj_uk]

Before this season had even started (early March) Sky slashed the price of subscription from £18pm to £10pm guaranteed for two years which is a desperate move by all accounts, interestingly it was originally a limited time offer until April 1st but it seems to have become permanent. I think it's safe to say Sky having exclusive rights to live races hasn't resulted in the boost in subscribers they expected so would Sky even renew their rights for F1? they probably would but they'd surely be bidding far less considering how much they've overestimated interest this time? so whilst going PayTV might have seen financial growth for F1 up until now you'd have expected Sky's next bid to be significantly less anyway so income will start shrinking. It's akin to selling something that's overpriced and getting the buyer to agree on no refunds before they realise they've been overcharged. I think long term F1 being on PayTV will only see interest further dwindle, if Liberty Global are happy with that then fine but F1 has spent the best part of 10 years being dumbed down to appeal to people switching over from whatever mind numbing rubbish is shown on free TV on a Sunday afternoon in the hope of capturing them as fans. To be honest I'm starting to think Bernie Ecclestone has pulled a fast one on Liberty Global.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

I don’t buy the argument that Liberty will be happier to have exclusivity with Sky because it means they get to advertise to a richer market.

By that logic, you should only be allowed to watch F1 if you can afford the subscription?

If little Johnny sees the F1 on free to view TV and notices the brand advertisements for Rolex then he’s hardly going to go out and get one because he can’t afford it. However, maybe that will inspire him to get a good job and earn enough to buy one because he’s grown up seeing these brands.

By the same token, if Johnny’s dad pays the bills and watches F1 because he enjoys the sport and can afford the subscription then he’s not going to suddenly splash a few grand on a Rolex because of the advertisements.

There’s value in targeted advertising but to suggest that Liberty will be happy to flog their sport to the richest audience is silly. That was Bernie’s mentality and he moved so slow to grow the brand that he almost went backward.

The real value in any sport will be an on-demand IPTV service where viewers can buy a-la carte. A bit like Netflix is slowly killing Sky... people have woken up to the fact that paying £7.99 a month is better than paying £47.99 a month.

I believe that the sooner we move to a system where a consumer can buy standalone packages for UFC/F1/Premiership football then you’ll really see a jump in viewers... particularly if you have an Apple TV or Fire TV that can serve you your content on a common platform, with none of the extra guff that comes with Sky e.g dishes, bazillion channels etc.

At the moment Liberty are stuck in their deal with Sky but on the upside it gives them plenty of time to get the bugs with F1TV ironed out. After the deal ends (and assuming there’s an audience left), they can double down on pushing their own cheaper subscription model and lure punters in who don’t mind paying Netflix prices. I personally can’t see it ever going back to free to air, but then it doesn’t need to.