uk f1 tv coverage - sky, bbc and ch4

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

I could not find this on formula1.com, I wonder why?

classic FOM!

i seem to recall during the Schumi/Ferrari days TV audience figures were going up and up. at the time i just thought that it had more to do with new markets opening up like Eastern Europe and China and improvements in satellite and internet technology.

perhaps that is still true but now im also curious to know how much of the current decline has to do with the lack of success Ferrari has had recently?

someone brought this up elsewhere recently but if you go to a race (some more so than others) you are going to see Tifosi out numbering fans of the other teams by a significant margin.

it also unusual for a sport to decline in popularity when there is one athlete dominating. from my own viewing history, Gretzky in NHL, Jordan in NBA, Woods in PGA, Williams sisters in WTA.

is it possible that the only reason the Vettel dominance translates into declining viewers is because he doesnt driver for Ferrari and the Tifosi have just turned their attention elsewhere?

[henners88]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

F1's global TV audience has dropped 50 million to about 450 million viewers. This has been blamed on Vettel's domination of the championship.


17 million of those were in France where F1 has switched from free to air to pay TV (surprise surprise). Another 30 million were lost in China also due to changes in broadcaster. There were a lot of other countries that had audience drops.

To make Bernie happy there was an 18% increase in the USA. The only other increases were slight ones in Britian and Italy of the major markets.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report...ce=mostpopular
I could not find this on formula1.com, I wonder why?

Hardly surprising and I don't think it is solely down to one team dominating. People aren't watching because the sport has less TV coverage now and if there is less coverage, people are less likely to tune in, I think it is as simple as that. As soon as we saw F1 being squeezed behind a pay wall throughout some of the worlds biggest markets, we saw the start of the decline. I have to say I do have a little smile on my face knowing I have been saying this would happen all along. We are seeing the sport we all love diminish in popularity rapidly which is very sad, but at least those of us who have been affected by this the most can take some comfort in the fact it will eventually affect everybody, including the teams. With greed comes karma

Originally Posted by chillibowl

classic FOM!
perhaps that is still true but now im also curious to know how much of the current decline has to do with the lack of success Ferrari has had recently?

I don't think so. We had 21 years of Ferrari not winning Championships and we didn't see any less passion from the Tifosi back then.