continuum16 wrote: ↑06 Mar 2025, 21:33
rbirules wrote: ↑06 Mar 2025, 16:58
continuum16 wrote: ↑06 Mar 2025, 07:04
Ironically I have the exact opposite opinion. It's probably a question of who I am used to at this point since I watched the Sky broadcast many times before F1TV and found it fine, but now I find it unbearable. F1TV used to (maybe they still do idk; I never select it) let you switch between the Sky/world feed and the F1TV commentary.
To be honest more than the commentary team I just need there to be a commercial-free option. If that is F1TV, fine. If it is someone else, fine.
In America you are just expected to miss your live sporting event to be advertised to regardless of what is happening in said event. It's BS and I [
redacted by MBS] hate it. It's so refreshing to just have ~90 minutes of uninterrupted racing and I thing having to give that up would genuinely make me not watch anymore.
What live events are being interrupted by commercials in America? As a fellow American I'm drawing a blank. The four major sports in the US (football, baseball, basketball, and hockey) all have breaks in play to accommodate commercials. F1 shown on ESPN (or ABC for a handful of races) are all shown commercial free live. I guess golf has commercials but you are hopping around from pairing to pairing for 4-5 hours of coverage (for majors at least). Soccer matches are shown without commercials. I guess some live endurance sports (cycling, marathons, Olympic distance races)
sometimes have commercial breaks.
I admittedly don't watch other forms of motor sports in the US, so maybe Indycar or Nascar has commercial breaks that you are referring to.
Indycar and NASCAR do have commercials which is part of it. NASCAr especially has a terrible habit of cutting to commercial at inopportune times. But my point is more general. I want to highlight something you said:
The four major sports in the US (football, baseball, basketball, and hockey)
all have breaks in play to accommodate commercials.
That is my point. We are so conditioned to accept these drawn-out start-stop sporting events that it is the norm to us. They literally
stop the competition to show commercials. Maybe it's just me but at a 30,000 foot view that seems so ass-backwards.
At least in racing, if you go to the track you can see the whole thing uninterrupted. Go to an NFL game and there are at least 30-60 minutes where you are just sitting there watching nothing but field workers and people standing around. I cannot imagine European or Latin American people accepting to miss 15-20 minutes of a 90 minute football (soccer) match to watch advertisements.
Fair point on Indycar and NASCAR, I don't watch them but I assumed this was the case.
It's hard to compare across sports. Soccer has a running clock so commercial breaks don't make sense during game play (15 second commercial as we wait for a corner kick?).
Baseball the teams come off the field and the other team comes on the field and warms up briefly between half innings. They have reduced this time in recent years and I feel that's perfectly fine for a commercial break. Hockey and basketball have scheduled commercial breaks at various points in a quarter/period, upon the next stoppage in play, and it's really not that obtrusive watching live or on TV, IMO.
I agree commercial breaks in football are awful if you are at the game in person, especially around TDs and the ensuing kickoff, there is little to no action for several minutes. Most of the major sports in America have more stopping and starting in the game action than soccer, and obviously there is none in a F1 race unless there is a red flag, but that doesn't mean you have to cram commercials into as many of those breaks as possible, elongating them in the process.
