05/03/2017
NEWS STORY
Despite a record number of races, British F1 viewing figures in 2016 hit a 12-year low.
The shock decline is revealed F1’s Global Media Report, which states: "there are several factors to take into account, one being the change in broadcaster the other potentially being the dip in fortune of Lewis Hamilton.”
While the fall in Britain might largely be accounted for by Hamilton's "dip in fortune" - which is something we'll come back to, does this account for the global fall of around 10m viewers?
According to the report, the drop to 390m marked the sixth successive year that F1 viewing numbers have declined, with the sport having shed around 137m viewers since 2010.
While there was a "dip in fortune" for Hamilton, the Briton fought back, turning a 43 point deficit into a lead and subsequently taking the title fight all the way down to the wire.
Therefore, is Hamilton's "dip in fortune" to blame or could it be others factors, such as the continued dominance by one team and the increasing move to Pay TV.
In Britain, as in Germany and Italy, coverage is split between Pay TV and Free to Air, but while Pay viewers get live coverage of all events (and practice sessions), in the UK, Free to Air provider Channel 4 only has the rights to 10 live events.
From 2019, in a deal thought to be worth $150m annually, Sky will become the sole broadcaster of F1 in the UK.
Bear in mind, the teams share 60 per cent of the sport's profits as prize money… so don’t expect any pressure from Toto or Christian to keep F1 on Free to Air "for the fans".
The sport's new owners are aware they have to reverse the decline, and while Super Bowl style events might work for the locals, the sport must win back its TV viewers.
However, Liberty Media - the clue is in the name - has already admitted that it wants to sign more Pay TV deals, insisting that a more exciting, less predictable sport will entice the viewers... and their money.
“I think there is uniformity about many of the actions that it will take to do that," admitted, Liberty’s chief executive Greg Maffei, according to The Independent. "Whether we can execute on those and how long it will take, that is still open.”
"One of the things we need to do is make the races more compelling, exciting and more beneficial to promoters," he continued. "Take best practices which worked in exciting races like Mexico City, like Singapore, like Abu Dhabi and bring them across the globe to traditional tracks, which may not have had as much financing but also just don’t have as exciting a product at the moment.”
Fact is, as we have seen with DRS, which Liberty's sporting boss Ross Brawn is keen to get rid of, you cannot "make more compelling and exciting", you cannot manufacture it.
Also, the races, like the countries they are hosted in and circuits they take part on, are all different, what works in Singapore will not work in Belgium.
One man's Super Bowl is not another man's FA Cup, rather an over-hyped, celebrity-festooned, over-commercialised nonsense passing itself as sport, where the half-time entertainer grabs more headlines than anything that happens on the field.
Note: A viewer, for F1 purposes, is someone who watches at least 15 mins of non-consecutive viewing. Consequently, if you watch 1 min of 15 races or 15 mins of one race you count as a viewer... but so is someone who watches every minute of every session!