Blinky McSquinty wrote:
This is the most damning part of that article:
In France F1 has been behind a paywall since 2013 and audiences have fallen from around 4 to 5 million on TF1 to 750,000 on Canal Plus
https://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2017/09/free-to-air-f1-tv-are-there-any-lessons-for-sky-and-the-uk-in-new-french-tv-move/If any sport does not have an easy portal for prospective fans to watch races, the sport eventually dies.
Personally, I am very happy Liberty bought the rights to Formula One and sacked Bernie. He did develop the sport, but recently all he has done is rape the fields of any crop. And that is not good for the future of the sport. Liberty seriously want to grow the sport into a larger and wider audience.
Personally, I will never pay to watch a race on TV.
There's not much choice for many people, though. Where I live, I can either pay or never watch something I love. I used to get it included as part of my SKY package, so I technically got it for free as I never actually paid separately for it, but sadly that's no longer possible.
I don't so much object to paying for it as I do the model that gives consumers zero choice, but that's as much the fault of digital rights law as it is of F1. It's ridiculous, in this day and age, that you can't watch a stream from one country if you live in another, especially if you live in something like the European Union where trade is supposed to be unrestricted. Digital rights hasn't caught up with digital reality. I can't even watch a clip of an interview
that no-one else may actually have, just because I live in the wrong post code. It's insane. If trade was truly free, I could then choose to watch SKY, or RTL (ugh), or Ziggo etc etc, depending on whether I felt their offering was worthwhile. Now, I don't have that choice, so paying feels more akin to extortion. I refuse to pay for my local service, because it's only available if I change my entire TV and internet supply, which I object to being forced to do. At least in the UK SKY offered NowTV, which allowed you to pay for individual races with no contract and I don't think that kind of model is particularly oppressive. If Formula One would offer a non-subscription internet stream at a reasonable rate I suspect they may add quite a fair number of viewers worldwide. People's viewing habits have moved on from static TV subscriptions. Many don't even own a TV any more (my kids do the bulk of their watching through their laptops).