Motorsport Off Topic Thread

IndyCar showing F1 how to go about things. Free internet stream (apparently upwards of 0.5m were watching a single car going around a track largely at limited speeds) and what amounted to a public debrief.

I realise that to cover a single car on a relatively short track doesn't require much in the way of of cameramen or equipment, but even if F1 had a few freely-accessible static cameras placed around the track it would be nice.

I guess Liberty are restricted by existing contracts on many matters (hence the relatively modest changes so far) but hopefully they and other motorsport organisations see the potential that such open access can give.
 
MissChief said:
I can't see Sky or anyone else that's paid handsomely for exclusive coverage being happy with that.
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Going forward we will have streamed coverage as a primary means of following sport. Direct streaming from FOM cuts out the likes of Sky and means more money for FOM and their fellow commercial rights holders in other sports. The only question is how long we will have to wait for it and how easily accessible it will be (years or more than a decade? Sky have a contract for another 7 years, so presumably we have to wait for these contracts to lapse before they can do anything else).

I was more referring to testing and less restrictive pit access though.
 
hopefully liberty will start only extending contracts upto what ever the longest contract they have at the moment, then after that they are free to do what they want.
If or hopefully when that happens, it would be trivial to broadcast testing etc. ALso by that time streaming will be even more of the younger generations who have grown up streaming.
 
Live coverage on the internet of Fernando Alonso’s first IndyCar test attracted more than 2 million views on Wednesday, as interest in the Spaniard’s progress captured the attention of fans.

[...]
This was split up between 950,000 views on IndyCar’s official Facebook channel and 1.2 million viewers on the official IndyCar channel on YouTube.

It was also was one of YouTube's top 10 trending videos of the day.
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Motorsport.com

Eek, I didn't realise it was that high!
 
The_Abyss said:
Surely the current spec Indycars are amongst the ugliest ever conceived and allowed to be built.
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I dont follow it, so Ive got little frame of reference, but I actually like the look of the Andretti - McLaren-Honda or whatever its called

Its certainly different to how "pretty" some f1 cars of the past were, but it has its own .......ellegance....imo (I know / understand the connection but Im not a fan of the orange per se)

this_is_gav said:
Going forward we will have streamed coverage as a primary means of following sport. Direct streaming from FOM cuts out the likes of Sky and means more money for FOM and their fellow commercial rights holders in other sports. The only question is how long we will have to wait for it and how easily accessible it will be (years or more than a decade? Sky have a contract for another 7 years, so presumably we have to wait for these contracts to lapse before they can do anything else).
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I completely agree that in the future (and it will probably take 7-10 years for infrastructure to be up to it) streaming will be primary means - but I dont think it will be free

Whether its Sky, FOM directly or whoever else - they wont want to give it away
 
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FrankJH said:
I completely agree that in the future (and it will probably take 7-10 years for infrastructure to be up to it) streaming will be primary means - but I dont think it will be free
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Oh no, of course not. FOM need their monies, and I doubt Youtube adverts would quite cut it!


(Warning, drunkenmaster length of post)
There is the potential for them to lower prices per head if they are cutting out the likes of Sky and still make more money than they are currently, but I'd personally settle for not having to take out a full Sky Sports package just to watch live F1.

Currently, for someone without a Sky package and only going for the cheapest deal offered it would be £594 per year I think (I've not dug deeper and I'm sure there are cashback deals and things around).

Let's say FOM were to offer a yearly pass for £150 (£7 per weekend, so around NowTV day-only prices, and 21 races a season). We save £450 per year, and FOM get 100% (obviously minus the costs needed for the streaming infrastructure) of the money coming in.

Sky's exclusive deal is rumoured to be worth $150m per year (£115m today) to FOM. If FOM were to charge each UK viewer £150 per season then based on the 2016 total viewers, then that works out at £3.2bn per year. Now obviously not all viewers would be prepared to fork out that much for a year's F1 and not all would want to watch all races, but even a quarter of that would be worth considerably more than Sky's deal, even when factoring in the cost of the streaming platform.

OK in other countries this may not work as well, and some countries are unlikely to even have the infrastructure to stream at all (indeed some parts of the UK still can't), but it's something they will be considering, potentially alongside a traditional TV highlights package.

This is all in laymans terms, doesn't cover taxes and is highly likely to have involved some poor maths on my part, but you can guarantee they'll be looking at the numbers and working out how to progress in the future. Other sports will be too.
 
Considering how much the MotoGP costs for the season pass ($150 this year) the F1 will be silly money. Having said that, I'd much rather pay for a streaming service than a cable TV package. The Aussie V8s service was something like $30 for 2017. You can't get better value than that and the quality of the races is top notch.
 
timmeh said:
Considering how much the MotoGP costs for the season pass ($150 this year) the F1 will be silly money. Having said that, I'd much rather pay for a streaming service than a cable TV package. The Aussie V8s service was something like $30 for 2017. You can't get better value than that and the quality of the races is top notch.
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I can still dream, that I hope they realise they need to massively expand fan base and they need to make it cheaper.
and yes aussie v8 is great value and pretty good service, however doesn't have the technology side which I love. So didn't renew.
 
I remember the days when you could simply turn on the telly and watch the F1, MotoGP, and the Aussies. Those were good days.


Like **** am I paying to watch it when they earn so much money already. I'll find alternative sources (there's a Dutch channel which streams it and I speak Dutch fluently, plus their commentary is ridiculously awesome).
 
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