[sceptic]

Originally Posted by pimmy

The BTCC's biggest problem is ITV.

- Qualifying coverage is restricted to a poor quality stream which is only available to watch live and not outside the UK.

Qualifying has been available on demand for the last three years at least, so you're wrong to say it is only available live. And the quality is better than the TV broadcast for a lot of people, since the web stream is full HD while around half of ITV4's audience still watches in SD.

You also can't criticise ITV for not making the stream available outside the UK and Ireland, as they don't have the rights outside of those countries.

You want to watch it in a different country? Complain to the broadcaster who has the rights in that country!

I agree that the international distribution of the BTCC on TV is shockingly bad, but that's nothing to do with ITV.

The live TV coverage will often feature the presenters waffling on about something or other when there's a support race on (seriously, who thinks it's a good idea to deliberately NOT show racing?).

This only happens at the start of the day, and only at circuits where the first race isn't a BTCC race.

It will be at TOCA's insistence that the first race shown on the TV programme is a BTCC race. They are, after all, the headline event.

- The coverage that the support package gets is disgraceful. You'll never see the Saturday races unless you're at the track, and I bet there's a very small percentage of fans who are able to attend full weekends at each round in order to see them, even in non-covid times. Of course, the exception to this is the final event, where ITV do actually bother to put some effort in. Some of the Sunday races either won't be shown, or will only be shown in the form of very brief highlights.

Again, I'm not sure why you think this is ITV's fault? The support races (like any club racing series) pay for their TV coverage. If they wanted to have the Saturday races covered, they could do. But the incremental benefit to them for doing that is obviously not enough to justify it, as only one of the support races has ever done it, and they stopped after a single season.

I personally don't understand why the top class of the MINI Challenge joined the package, because it's getting the worst coverage it's had for years. From 2013-15 it had a highlights package on TV and on Youtube where the videos can still be seen, featuring every race; 2016-18 was highlights on TV only but all of the races were covered; 2019 had full-season live streaming on Youtube and the races can still be watched. Since joining the TOCA package only about 70-ish% of the races have been shown in any form (and that number might be generous).

ITV delivers massive audiences that are great for attracting sponsors. Having 70% of the races on ITV will give far more exposure than having all the races streamed live on YouTube. Actually having 7% of the races on ITV would give more exposure than 100% on YouTube:

The top result if I search for "Mini Challenge 2019" on YouTube is a race from Brands Hatch which has so far had 8,513 views. That's after more than two years. While at 3.30pm on June 13th, there were more than 120,000 people watching the Mini Challenge from Snetterton on ITV4 or the ITV Hub.

Alan Gow repeatedly says the BTCC's TV deal is the envy of national championships across the world. And he's right.