Sport The Formula 1 Thread

[GwiDan]

Seriously? Megalols

Yup, based on the fact that half will be shown on the BBC.

[Sidewaysbob]

Ten races at £48 a pop is a cracking week at Le Mans with a grandstand seat in one of the better stands too.

[Halo]

Well, I'm done with F1. Sky can fuck off, and showing half the races on the BBC is a complete kick in the teeth; personally, I'd rather that they showed no races rather than effectively promote Sky. Bit like Cricket, which I used to enjoy watching but since it fucked off over the Sky and I now don't even bother thinking about it.

It's been a good run.

[Wools]

I remember back to when there was an idea of a Sky channel with pay per view options. I always thought that I would be happy for such a service, but I would only buy the opening round, Silverstone, Spa, Monza, Melbourne, Suzuka and the final round of the season. If the only option to watch live races is to pay Sky £48 a race in a subscription package, shit races and all, then I will not be paying for the privilege.

I’m feeling completely deflated. I won’t stump up a subscription of that magnitude to watch the season, 5 Live is wonderful but Radio is not the best to watch a visual sport and what courses will the BBC be given access to?

I guess we’ll see what races the BBC will cover, how Sky treat the sport and how viewing figures react.

[JPR]

BBC are streaming the race and qualy in HD this weekend.

[mexos]

I wonder how we would have all reacted to this if it was announced while ITV still had the rights. We'd all probably be cheering! Maybe.

The loss is compounded by the almost certain loss of the excellent standards in coverage we've got used to over the past few seasons.

[bradigor]

Not sure i am with you here, what Devine right do you have to watch F1?

I don't, just saying I no longer will, as I refuse to get Sky Sports.

[Yewone]

Is there even the remotest of hopes that if this bombs (viewing figures dive etc) that it could be back fully with the beeb in a year or so's time? I need some kind of glimmer of hope here guys.. no matter how remote.

The other big kicker is that even though the BBC are retaining "some" races the prerace build-up and reporting is obviously going to suffer as a result of the cuts. Its just never going to be the same again.. is it?

[PaB]

Hey, don't go barking at me, I was just explaining the other guy's point. But yes, why would companies advertise in Edge if no-one read it?

I'm not barking at you, I am just trying to get to the bottom of describing viewers as products.

I can see the argument with Free magazines, and free to air television. But not with things you have to pay for, since the business model clearly shows your advertising revenue is not enough on its own. In this regard, viewers/readers are clearly customers as they are making a clear choice in purchasing the item.

Competition is sold to people as a good thing because it drives down prices, or incrwases quality. With Football, Sky did not drive down the price, but they did increase the quality by a huge amount, which in turn, forced other comapnies ot up their game. I do not see how they can with F1, since, as mentioned, the feed is supplied by a single company. What channel you watch it on, makes no difference whatsoever. The only thing you can improve is pre and post race shows, and lets face it, we watch F1 for the racing.

So what are we left with? A £600 bill for exactly the same product as we already have.

There are three winners in this

1. The BBC can drop F1 and recuce their outgoings in a time when they are under hue pressure to make cuts

2. Sky get more subsribers

3. FOTA and FOM get ashed load of cash.

The losers are every single person than watches F1. Even if you are an exsiting sky sports customer, your subcription is going towards paying for something you can already watch. You gain nothing, and lose the potential for that money to go towards some other event not currently televised.

[morcs]

I wonder how we would have all reacted to this if it was announced while ITV still had the rights. We'd all probably be cheering! Maybe.

Really? I thought the ITV coverage was excellent, was a real surprise that BBC managed to improve even on what they had done already.

Obviously ITV had adverts but there's little they can do about that.

I never really fell in line with the James Allen haters, Leggard I found instantly irritating though.

[JohnC]

I wonder how we would have all reacted to this if it was announced while ITV still had the rights. We'd all probably be cheering! Maybe.

I'd rather ITV had it. At least then I could see most of it in a consistent manner. I won't see any Sky races unless I "steal" it.

[Shimmyhill]

Really? I thought the ITV coverage was excellent, was a real surprise that BBC managed to improve even on what they had done already.

Obviously ITV had adverts but there's little they can do about that.

Thats like saying you had excellent unprotected sex, i mean i got aids and I'm gonna die but the sex was excellent!

Adverts ruined F1, i hate adverts on normal shows but in live sport - fuck off, would rather pay for it than have it interrupted with adverts!

[Snowman]

The other big kicker is that even though the BBC are retaining "some" races the prerace build-up and reporting is obviously going to suffer as a result of the cuts. Its just never going to be the same again.. is it?

You never know, the BBC team may well try their hardest to put the Sky coverage to shame as often as they possibly can.

[bradigor]

Few questions about Sky Sports (genuine here as I haven't had it for years)

1. How many channels are there now?

2. Can you subscribe to a custom number of channels? (eg: I want SS1, SS3, SS6 as they show the sports I want to watch)

3. How much is a yearly subscription

4. Is HD included in the cost?

Apologies is this has been answered previously in the thread.

[Daley]

If the football is anything to go by, get ready for hype overload as Sky tell you this will be the greatest, most exciting race ever, then tell you it is living up to their expectations while it is going on, then talk for four hours about how great it was. Even if it was not a very good race.

[Dudley]

Fuck sake Autosport is shit these days. Every time I read an article there's a huge glaring error, see the report on FP1.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93457

Further down the field, Jarno Trulli, who was projected to use a new power-steering system for this race in a bid to help him get to grips with the Lotus - ended the session 20th, 0.5s off Heikki Kovalainen's time.

19. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Renault 1m26.878s + 3.528 26

20. Karun Chandhok Lotus-Renault 1m27.352s + 4.002 21

I have no idea who actually drove the Lotus but apparently Autosport doesn't either.

[morcs]

Thats like saying you had excellent unprotected sex, i mean i got aids and I'm gonna die but the sex was excellent!

Adverts ruined F1, i hate adverts on normal shows but in live sport - fuck off, would rather pay for it than have it interrupted with adverts!

Will there not be adverts in the Sky coverage then?

[Dudley]

^^ They claim not but I suspect there will be after a year or two if not initially.

Few questions about Sky Sports (genuine here as I haven't had it for years)

1. How many channels are there now?

2. Can you subscribe to a custom number of channels? (eg: I want SS1, SS3, SS6 as they show the sports I want to watch)

3. How much is a yearly subscription

4. Is HD included in the cost?

Apologies is this has been answered previously in the thread.

1) 4 + news

2) Only in the sense you can have 1+2 or all of them.

3) About £600

4) In the region of £600 since you can't subscribe to just sports you have to take a bunch of other shit too, without HD it's maybe £100 less.

[mexos]

You never know, the BBC team may well try their hardest to put the Sky coverage to shame as often as they possibly can.

If they are in a studio there's not much they can do...

[tyler]

What makes it worse is that the coverage has never been better right now. Enjoy the rest of the season as it lasts, it will never be as good again.

The BBC team make the whole 3-4 hours so great on a Sunday. Such a shame it's going almost as soon as it's peaked. I really hope they can do the same show for the 10 races rather than from a studio.

I'm sure Sky will do a great job of the actual race coverage with lots of camera/on board options etc and there's always the 5Live commentary. The cost is just so much more though and we lose all that the BBC team bring to the table.

[bradigor]

^^ They claim not but I suspect there will be after a year or two if not initially.

1) 4 + news

2) Only in the sense you can have 1+2 or all of them.

3) About £600

4) In the region of £600 since you can't subscribe to just sports you have to take a bunch of other shit too, without HD it's maybe £100 less.

Thanks for that.

[Daley]

Few questions about Sky Sports (genuine here as I haven't had it for years)

1. How many channels are there now?

2. Can you subscribe to a custom number of channels? (eg: I want SS1, SS3, SS6 as they show the sports I want to watch)

3. How much is a yearly subscription

4. Is HD included in the cost?

Apologies is this has been answered previously in the thread.

1. 4+ news.

2. You have to take the basic package which is about £20 I think. All Sky Sports is about another £20.

3. It's about £40 just for the sport as outlined above but...

4. HD is a tenner more roughly. So £50 a month.

[Halo]

Is there even the remotest of hopes that it this bombs (viewing figures dive etc) that it could be back fully with the beeb in a year or so's time?

Zero, I expect. Sky can afford F1 as a loss-leader.

[tyler]

I just phoned to cancel Sky, not on the back of this, I was planning on doing any way but they're extremely busy...

[McCoy]

Reflecting a bit more on the announcement and its really not a good idea at all is it? It's about the worst of all possible worlds really.

If Sky had just got the rights to everything then at least we could look at the yearly cost and say, well its expensive but I do get 20 races out of it. As it is 10 of those races will be screened on the BBC making it prohibitively expensive to subscribe to Sky just for the other ten.

It also means a split in the commentary team, unless the BBC and Sky agree to cooperate which is unlikely. It means those who prefer the BBC Commentary team will have to adapt to another commentary team for ten of the races assuming they decide to subscribe to Sky anyway. If Sky had taken the rights wholesale then they could probably have poached some of the BBC guys to at least be able to present the best possible show. Now we have two different organisations competing for viewers but the BBC are only competing on ten occasions. The rest Sky wins by default. And are the BBC really going to be able to get the same level of talent to present the races knowing they will only be able to cover half the season?

If the BBC hadn't wanted the rights then even if ITV or Five had got them then at least there would be consistency and the same team week in week out. As it is now, it looks like a giant mess. Some weeks the BBC will show the race, some weeks they won't. It will be hard enough for us hardcore fans to keep track of without Joe public wondering if the next race is on BBC or not.

If F1 wants to go pay TV then fine, but this half and half approach is just silly. All or nothing please.

[Shimmyhill]

Will there not be adverts in the Sky coverage then?

None in the race

^^ They claim not but I suspect there will be after a year or two if not initially.

Rubbish there are no ads in any sport sky show during the action - even in the cricket the ads are only there at end change or break, has been like this since sports started.

[Daley]

The ONLY way this could possibly be worth the money is if you could, on the red button or whatever, follow a driver. So if the race-director is watching Laps of Vettel out in front while there's an epic three-way battle between Hamilton, Alonso, and Webber, you could choose to continuously watch from one of the drivers' on-board cameras. Sky has the resources to make this happen.

I'm sure something like that will happen. They had a feature a few years ago where you could watch any one player for 90 minutes during a match. They stopped it I think though as it was rubbish.

[Hawkeye]

^^ They claim not but I suspect there will be after a year or two if not initially.

I'd don't see why they would. It's a premium subscription channel, they don't break three hour movies for adverts.

[rafaqat]

I reckon Brundle will end up at Sky pretty soon. Lots of money plus the chance to do ALL the races will be very tempting. I suspect a few of the current team will head off too like EJ and Coulthard. They're all about F1 and nothing else so no ties to other existing BBC shows.

[Hawkeye]

It also means a split in the commentary team, unless the BBC and Sky agree to cooperate which is unlikely. It means those who prefer the BBC Commentary team will have to adapt to another commentary team for ten of the races assuming they decide to subscribe to Sky anyway. If Sky had taken the rights wholesale then they could probably have poached some of the BBC guys to at least be able to present the best possible show.

It's possible Sky might try and poach them anyway. Come to us to cover every race until 2018, or stay with the BBC with less coverage and be out of a job soon!