BBC to lose F1 coverage from 2016

[i70q7m7ghw]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/formul ... eason.html

If this is to be believed it's all over for the BBC. It's hardly a surprise since the BBC are making massive budget cuts at the moment and F1 is probably right near the top of their spending list.

ITV will most likely pickup the coverage by the sounds of it, but I suspect it'll only be half the season? Which will mean SKY pretty much have the monopoly now since ITV will have adverts during the coverage.

The BBC was probably the worst thing to happen the F1 coverage in the UK. They should never have bid for it in the first place if they couldn't commit to it in the long term. The deal they did with SKY has opened the door to F1 going to pay TV, and now it'll never go back.

I cancelled my SKY tv a long time ago, and I had been using SKY GO kindly offered by a family friend, but they've also now cancelled SKY because the prices are simply too high. I'm not sure what I'll do next year, I'll probably stop watching F1 live entirely. I love the sport a lot, but I can't justify the monthly cost of a SKY SPORTS subscription just to watch the race live every fortnight, £45.50 a month, or £27.30 per race! (assuming 20 races).

[hemichromis]

Well Abu dhabi's viewing figures BBC 2.21 million, Sky 399,000. The end of formula 1 on free TV is a big problem.

Why can't the government justify the spending as 7 of the 10 teams are based in the UK?
How much tax do we make from them?

[Facts Only]

You get Sky Sports F1 with the HD pack whick is £35 a month cheaper than sky sports pack. Also.if you ring up and say you are laving they will slash the price. I appreciate that its still not free though.

I wouldn't expect any government to fork out to put any sport on free-to-view TV. And if they did Football and a long list of other sports have a much stronger case.

The BBC's charter is to Inform, Educate and Entertain with entertain very much being last on the list and F1s neither informs or educates so its a low priority.

[R_Redding]

I'm surprised its taken this long for the Beeb to dump F1.

The BBCs F1 project was Niall Sloanes baby.. So when Roger Mosey retired as head of sport ..and Barbara Slater was promoted above/ahead-of sloane...Sloane resigned and F1 lost its big ally at the beeb.. it was obvious that Slater would (and was employed to do so) cut the sporting budget to cover the cost of the 2012 Olympics,the move to Salford,the failed Siemens video project etc etc
.
So slater went after F1 with the same zeal Nixon had used to dismantle Kennedys Apollo legacy. She had lawyers go through the F1 contract and found that the Concorde teams agreement only requires that 50% of the races are shown live on free to air in the UK..so cue the Sky deal.(and a possible 2016 ITV deal).

As Slater has no affinity for F1 , being a tennis fanatic and Wimbledon member ..it spelt the end for virtually every sport on the Beeb except for tennis and football... and this is political and has nothing to do with money..the Beeb are one of the richest broadcasters in the world.

What I think is indefensible , is the way the beeb has given all its sport to Sky ....rather than have it shewn on other UK terrestrial channels . They have done this deliberately and against the wishes of all license fee payers. To the point where I've always wondered if the architect of this policy is a Sky shareholder.

Rob

[R_Redding]

You get Sky Sports F1 with the HD pack whick is £35 a month

I thought it was moved from the HD package to the full sports package in jan 2015 for new viewers ,having originally being in the HD package..and remaining so for those who signed up in 2014.

Rob

[ScottB]

The big mistake was, that upon deciding they couldn't afford it anymore, instead of giving up the rights, they part sold them on to Sky. Channel 4 were all ready to mount a bid for the rights, there is an excellent bid document they had produced still floating around on the internet should you fancy having a hunt for it.

If it goes Sky only, that's going to take away a lot of viewers...

[OneAlex]

The trouble with the UK specifically is it's not just about race viewing figures, it's about visibility and legacy.

As it stands the majority of teams are based in the UK, the vast majority of mechanics, team personnel, race officials, stewards and marshals come from England, and much of the engineering and technology comes from the UK. I would reckon most of those people got involved in F1 because it was a sport widely available and easy to watch regularly on free tv as they were growing up.

If you make the races harder to watch/reliant on a Sky subscription, you're cutting out a huge core of audience who might have grown up aware of the motor racing industry and wishing to go into it. I would expect it ultimately to have a knock-on impact on England's position in F1 and motorsport, with the jobs and economic benefits that go with it.

[Gaz.]

The BBC should have done the decent thing in 2011 and relinquished the rights to C4.

Hopefully this will kickstart another debate into the licence fee.

[adrianjordan]

Well if it leaves the BBC then I will almost certainly stop watching. I can't afford a Sky subscription and ITV Player isn't anywhere close to Iplayer and I don't have an aerial in my flat so can't watch live...

Hope this is another case of the Daily Fail getting it wrong...

[i70q7m7ghw]

You get Sky Sports F1 with the HD pack whick is £35 a month cheaper than sky sports pack. Also.if you ring up and say you are laving they will slash the price. I appreciate that its still not free though.

The HD pack doesn't exist anymore for new customers, you have to buy the full sky sports package. I did the discount to stop you leaving trick 3 times in a row, they wouldn't offer anything on the 4th attempt so I left. Even with that discount it was still too expensive, I hardly watched any of the other channels and the proof is over a year on I don't miss it at all.

EDIT: A few other places reporting the same story:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motors ... eason.html

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/225814/1/i ... -deal.html

http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-rad ... Sky-Sports

However, Ecclestone is saying it's not a done deal:-

"The bottom line is that they are cutting back on all types of sport and if we really, really, really had to, we'd say 'you have got a contract and you better get on with it.'" he said.

"They can't leave the contract early.

"The Beeb have always done a very, very good job. I have no problem at all with them. It is just they can't afford to continue with what they have done in the past."

Ecclestone said he would ideally like the BBC to continue and, until the fate of that contract is sorted, then it was too early to conclude anything with ITV.

Asked if the ITV deal was going to be put in place, Ecclestone said: "To do that we would have to agree to have that done so I don't know.

"We like the BBC for obvious reasons. It was free-to-air and they did a good job as I say with all the support they gave at the circuit.

"At the moment I don't know what we are going to do."

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/eccle ... -contract/

Ecclestone allowed them to do the deal with SKY, so I suspect he's likely to allow ITV to takeover the BBC contract as well, he will probably charge a termination fee which is why he's not saying it's a done deal yet.

One question remains for me... if ITV wanted all of the races, would that be possible? BBC cut back to half the season to cut costs, but if ITV had the money to show the full season perhaps Ecclestone would allow that?

[ClarkBT11]

Why don't you buy a android box and get everything on sky for a one off payment of around £100 for a decent one. It's not illegal for us just for however is streaming the content.

[horse]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/formul ... eason.html

If this is to be believed it's all over for the BBC.

I wouldn't trust the Daily Mail to get its own name right.

[RicME85]

Well if it leaves the BBC then I will almost certainly stop watching. I can't afford a Sky subscription and ITV Player isn't anywhere close to Iplayer and I don't have an aerial in my flat so can't watch live...

Hope this is another case of the Daily Fail getting it wrong...

You need to either ask a friend or family member who has Sky to give you their SkyGo login (that's what I do then use my PS4 to watch on a big TV) or install Kodi on a PC/Raspberry Pi/Amazon Fire TV stick and stream using the UK Turk plugin or one of the many others that offer the same.
Another alternative is getting a digi box that is web enabled and getting a sub of CS Kings, can have all the TV you want for a year for the cost of Sky for three months.

[Cold Fussion]

Lets be real, the current BBC deal has been pretty half hearted. For the first (2?) seasons after they got it back from ITV, they had that ridiculous play by play commentator who was an absolute abomination, whoever thought play by play commentary has any place in F1, especially with a completely non knowledgeable person should have been sacked for incompetence. Then for one year had a decent commentary team in Brundle and Coulthard and then they decided to scale back their program into insignificance. It's far more preferable in my eyes to say the BBC stopped broadcasting F1 in the 1990s.

[Just_a_fan]

Hopefully this will kickstart another debate into the licence fee.

Sadly that won't happen. The BBC has way too many friends in Westminster. Also, the BBC is seen as being as central to the UK as the NHS is. It's known as "Auntie" for a reason.

My view is that the license fee should be scrapped and the BBC left to fund itself. That way people can choose what they watch and who they pay. I'd consider a Sky account if I didn't also have to pay the BBC too. As it is, no chance, as I don't like paying twice for something.

I've never figured out why Bernie doesn't sell each race to the viewer directly. With streaming on line these days, a fiver a race would be easy to do and likely to be attractive to many.