BBC and Sky awarded rights in new Formula 1 deal

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

BBC says F1 coverage faced axe unless it shared races with Sky

? BBC to show only half of the races in final two years of deal

? Savings help BBC keep rights for events such as Wimbledon

The BBC has defended its decision to renegotiate its Formula One contract and share coverage with Sky in a deal expected to save the corporation around ?16.5m a year, claiming it would have otherwise been forced to ditch the sport altogether.

The BBC has given up the final two years of its exclusive five-year deal, which cost around ?50m a year, and reinvested the proceeds in a new shared deal with Sky that runs until 2018 but will mean it shows only half the races live.

The BBC's director of sport, Barbara Slater, would only say that the savings were "genuinely significant", but it is understood that the corporation is paying about a third less per year ? or around ?33m.

The decision has already been criticised by some of the BBC's on-air presenters, including Martin Brundle, and fans who will have to subscribe to Sky Sports to follow every race live. But Slater said: "This deal strikes a really good balance between continuing to make Formula One available and operating in tough financial times."

Given that BSkyB will be paying far more than ?16.5m per year for full live rights, which it will exploit across all platforms, the expectation is that Bernie Ecclestone has again negotiated a significant increase on the total flowing into the sport. Ecclestone, the Formula One supremo, hailed the deal as "super", saying: "There will be highlights as well as live coverage on two different networks now, so we get the best of both worlds."

The deal is modelled on a similar arrangement with the Masters golf, where the BBC now shows the climactic two days live and Sky shows the entire event.

Slater said: "Any loss is a shame, of course. But in a very tough financial climate, both of those deals make real sense and deliver real value and continued access for the audience. It may well have been we would have had to have lost these rights simply because of our ability to manage our portfolio going forward. The renegotiation has allowed us to come up with such a good package that we have tried to make this sustainable."

The loss of exclusive grand prix rights could help the BBC when it comes to retaining the rights to other flagship sports properties such as Wimbledon, the current deal for which runs until 2014. "There will always be events we would want to acquire exclusively. In each individual sport, it's possible to take different approaches," Slater said.

The BBC will show the qualifying and the race itself from half the grands prix, including Silverstone, Monaco and the final race of the season. Sky will show all the races live, plus extensive coverage of the build up and qualifying, and Slater said there was a possibility that they could share production resources and even on?screen talent. "We will seek to share production resources where appropriate, that is something we are working through."

It is understood that the deal was signed at 5am this (Friday) morning in order to enable Sky to unveil it before its results announcement to the City. The new deal will give added impetus to ongoing attempts by News Corp, which owns 39% of BSkyB, to put together a consortium to buy Formula One from the venture capital group CVC.

Brundle, the former driver who is one of the faces of the BBC's Formula One coverage, said he had not found out about the deal until late on Thursday night and was "not impressed".

"Found out last night, no idea how it will work yet ? I'm out of contract, will calmly work through options. Not impressed," he tweeted.

The popularity of Formula One has blossomed in recent years with the success of the British drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. But it has not been a regular ratings winner for the BBC because many of the races are by necessity broadcast live outside of peak time.

The flagship races remain a big draw, however, and the sport reaches audiences that the BBC otherwise finds it hard to attract. This year's British Grand Prix peaked with 6.6 million viewers on 10 July. The Sunday afternoon race, won by Fernando Alonso, averaged 4.9 million viewers across three hours of coverage on BBC1. It was substantially up on the 3.6 million average audience who watched the British Grand Prix ? on ITV ? in 2001.

The BBC was the traditional home of Formula One motor racing for many years until the rights were bought by ITV in 1997. Formula One remained on the commercial broadcaster until 2009 when it returned to the BBC after a 13-year break. ITV exercised a break clause to ditch the sport with two years of its deal remaining to free up cash for Champions League football. The presenter of BBC's Formula One television coverage, Jake Humphrey, said on Twitter: "Feels like the right time to say how proud I am of the whole BBC F1 production team & the programmes we've produced for you guys since '09'."

Jeremy Darroch, the BSkyB chief executive, said that the satellite broadcaster became involved in the negotiations for Formula One very late in the process. Channel 4 reportedly expressed an interest in buying the rights, while ITV rejected the idea of making a bid. "Formula One is in the top tier of sports properties," Darroch said. "It is very much a blue riband event."

The BBC has been under pressure to cut costs since last year's hastily agreed licence fee settlement with the government. The level of the licence fee was frozen and the corporation took on a number of new funding responsibilities, including the BBC World Service, prompting the director general, Mark Thompson, to embark on a 20% cost-cutting exercise aimed at saving ?600m a year by 2014.

Formula One had been mooted as one of the sports it was most likely to drop in a bid to save money on rights deals. The future of its Wimbledon coverage was also speculated on, but it was always likely to prioritise the iconic tennis tournament over Formula One.

Overall, the corporation is understood to spend around ?300m a year on sport. Last year's licence fee deal, which normally takes up a year to complete, was controversially hammered out behind closed doors in just over a week.

The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, described the deal as "tough but fair" and reassured the BBC's commercial rivals that it would no longer be used to "blast them out of the water".

Source: The Guardian

[TheLegendOfMart]

Read the small print...So no HD, can't watch on PC at home, laptop in hotel and a mobile device of choice. And some content is for Sky TV viewers only as well.

Thats wierd cause i phoned up sky and they said there would be HD?

[torrentthief]

bbc are only saving 33% yet they are losing 50% of the races. what a crap deal!

[TheLegendOfMart]

bbc are only saving 33% yet they are losing 50% of the races. what a crap deal!

Not only that but we are losing the award winning bafta coverage pre race and f1 forum. From the sounds of it they are only broadcasting the actual qualifying and races when the pre stuff opts out.

[Teebor]

Anyone know the viewing figures for Wimbledon?

Just wondering as we know the figures for F1, might help to give us a more balanced view

[TheLegendOfMart]

According to viewing figures Wimbledon gets on average less viewers than F1 does and doing some quick googlefu research costs them ?40-50m a year for Wimbledon.

[DrCheese]

Wimbledon is only one out of four Tennis Grand slams a year, the rest are all on Pay TV or not on the BBC, so the BBCs coverage of the sport is around the same as F1s will be.

Also, as above this is the BBCs way of appealing to the Tennis loving audience part of the TV license fee payers. Pretty sure people would moan if the BBC bid over the odds for all 4 of the grand slams.

[acnpt]

No worries, at least the money is going to fund something worthwhile - BBC to cover EVERY SINGLE MILE of 70-day Olympic torch relay daily mail.

Can't wait to see the excitement of the torch entering Scunthorpe...:/

[DrCheese]

meh, it's a once in a lifetime event. As the host broadcaster it's something they'll have to record anyway so may as well air it. It's not exactly going to cost millions to do it either.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Stop being a BBC apologist. The BAFTA award winning coverage was bringing in millions of new viewers and each successive race viewing figures were getting even higher and higher breaking viewing figure records for the FOM. They spent wasted ?900m moving BBC Sport and 5Live to 'Media City UK' in Salford because they wanted to invest more of the licence fee in the north of england which is a ridiculous amount of money to waste for no reason whatsoever.

Not only that but BBC still had exclusive rights to F1 till 2012 they could have told Bernie to get lost and held out for another partner like ITV or CH4 so even if they still had to split the races the rest of them would still be on FTA TV.

Another thing to consider is the concorde agreement which has a provision to keep F1 FTA, Bernie has broke this contract with this money grabbing move its going to be interesting how its handled.

[Teebor]

Just found out I can get sky sports for about ?12 per month without a dish, hmm mixed opinions now. Need to see which channel its on as I can only get 1 or 2

[TheLegendOfMart]

Where from?

[Viper550]

In Canada, we also don't get F1 over the air either. However, its carried on a channel that is at least the Canadian equivalent to ESPN (and we get the British commentary with IndyCar-styled side-by-side commercials), and said channel is available on basic cable

Something about Sky Sports seems fishy, it seems more like a premium channel.

[metallithrax]

In Canada, we also don't get F1 over the air either. However, its carried on a channel that is at least the Canadian equivalent to ESPN (and we get the British commentary with IndyCar-styled side-by-side commercials), and said channel is available on basic cable

Something about Sky Sports seems fishy, it seems more like a premium channel.

It's part owned by Rupert Murdoch (39%) - fishy enough for you?

He was trying to purchase the rest of it, until the phone hacking scandal broke.

[Kerm]

This is massively ****.

[verved]

Stop being a BBC apologist. The BAFTA award winning coverage was bringing in millions of new viewers and each successive race viewing figures were getting even higher and higher breaking viewing figure records for the FOM. They spent wasted ?900m moving BBC Sport and 5Live to 'Media City UK' in Salford because they wanted to invest more of the licence fee in the north of england which is a ridiculous amount of money to waste for no reason whatsoever.

Not only that but BBC still had exclusive rights to F1 till 2012 they could have told Bernie to get lost and held out for another partner like ITV or CH4 so even if they still had to split the races the rest of them would still be on FTA TV.

Another thing to consider is the concorde agreement which has a provision to keep F1 FTA, Bernie has broke this contract with this money grabbing move its going to be interesting how its handled.

Well said m8.

Bernie is sucking the sport dry in my view.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Bernie Ecclestone says Sky pay-to-view TV deal will grow F1's audience

Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has promised that the sport's audience will grow with the onset of Sky's pay-to-view television deal from 2012.

A surprise deal was announced on Friday morning that the BBC and Sky Sports will share coverage of the sport in the UK from 2012 - with the satellite and cable broadcaster showing all live sessions while the BBC transmits only half on terrestrial digital television - prompting a wave of angry responses from license holders on internet forums and Twitter.

But Ecclestone, speaking after leaving a meeting to address the subject with F1's team principals, insisted that the deal is positive for the sport.

"It's good for Formula 1," he said. "For sure there are going to be a lot more people viewing, and a lot more opportunities for people to view, so from that point I'm very happy.

"I've been finalising this all night long and one or two things might change a little."

"Sky will broadcast everything, all the races, live. The Beeb will do 50 per cent live, and when it isn't live, they will be putting together a very good highlights package.

"They [bBC] may yet do the whole race deferred, we have to see."

Asked what he would say to fans who could not afford a Sky subscription, Ecclestone replied: "That's where the problem is, I know, but from what I understand Sky has enormous coverage, 10 million homes.

"For those who can't watch Sky, they can still watch on a Sunday night, which will probably be better than watching the whole race live half the time," he added.

Ecclestone added that the deal was not complicated by issues surrounding the current Concorde Agreement because the covenant comes to an end prior to the beginning of the Sky contract.

"The Concorde finishes in 2012," he said. "After then there may not be one, we don't need one. We'll see.

"But I think this is all positive, and having spoken to the teams, they think it's positive too."

Along with indicating that the deal was likely to mean more income for the teams, Ecclestone spoke about the general onset of pay-per-view television and how the media landscape affected F1 in the future.

"We do have to do the best we can, and I'm interested in getting the maximum coverage because we have to invest in the future for the good of the teams and for Formula 1," he said.

"I think in the end people will be more happy with this than they are at the moment."

Source: Autosport

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

What's to stop SKy from doing the usual trick they do? Race 1 on Sky Sports 1, Race 2 on Sky Sports 2, race 3 on Sky Sports 3, race 4 back on Sky Sports 1? That way you would have to subscribe to ALL their Sports package to receive all races!

That is a typical Sky trick to gain maximum revenue from people. :angry:

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

Generally not a fan of anyone getting exclusive rights to anything.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Very crappy result, the main race should remain on free to air TV.

I guess this gives a fair few people no choice but to download it now...

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

Generally not a fan of anyone getting exclusive rights to anything.

But the fact that to get all races LIVE in HD, as pointed out earlier in the thread, you will have to potentially fork out ?610 EXTRA per year, on top of the licence fee already being paid by TV owners.

It was already being shown on BBC for the cost of the licence fee!

Please tell me how this is in any way, shape or form beneficial to the customer, i.e. the F1 viewer now exclusivity has been broken?

[acnpt]

Generally not a fan of anyone getting exclusive rights to anything.

This doesn't really work with sports though.

Look at what happened when they split up the premiership with some matches going to ESPN. If you want to see all games, you now need to subscribe to Sky Sports and ESPN.

Also, why are people blaming Sky? It was the BBC who broke their exclusive contract....

[+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹]

Even as a sky subscriber I hate this decision. The BBC has brought F1 into the next century with its coverage, sky will treat it like all its other crap its bought, throw loads of money and flashy graphics at it and hope it works out. Sadly this is will not work and will only turn people away from the sport. I for one won't watch it on Sky with all the adverts and everything they will no doubt throw in. FU sky.

[]SK[]

Sky announced ?1bn profits today too http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16039604

Really sad news today. I guess it could be worse and that Sky just took the whole thing.

[what]

Just found out I can get sky sports for about ?12 per month without a dish, hmm mixed opinions now. Need to see which channel its on as I can only get 1 or 2

?150 a year seems like a lot to watch 10 F1 races. Subscription prices will increase from September 2012 as well (they're frozen until then, so they'll obviously go up then as well).