Formula 1 - 2017 Season

[Deleted member 2197]

Agreed. Bottas really didn't have any standout races at Williams except for the occasional competitive sprints when traffic was heavy. Definitely will be interesting how he performs now that he has a competitive car.

 

[DJ12]

Great news today, Libery Media have 'forced' Bernie to quit. Hopefully they realise what he didn't presuamably after receiving several back handers, that the F1 fan base is in Europe, not Baku. Fine to have races outside of Europe obviously, but trying to force more money from the likes of Silverstone, Monza and Spa because the Crown Prince of JibberJabberstan want to pay 3 times as much to have a race is not the way forward.

Oh, and I have fingers crossed for the ditching of pay to watch for F1, but as Americans love their PPV's this is doubtful.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Apparently they are already sending the message out that Ferrari may lose their automatic $100M payment; presumably that would mean the other "historic team payments" would go as well, but Ferrari get by far the biggest despite the fact they've not won a championship for years. Current contracts are locked in until 2020, though, so its unlikely we will see redistribution of payments before then.

 

[cjo]

Oh, and I have fingers crossed for the ditching of pay to watch for F1, but as Americans love their PPV's this is doubtful.

I don't mind paying for F1 if I have to, but I'd be very interested if they did their own internet-based package. The only other alternative in the UK from 2019 is paying for Sky, which is at least £22/month (not including the F1 package), which is too much.

 

[DJ12]

F1 is not exciting anymore, so I won't ever pay for it. It's becoming a minority sport, all Bernie's fault obviously, a few exciting reaces when Pirrelli started doing the tyres and all of a sudden that became what he wanted, tyres that when driven hard wouldn't last 3 laps no matter what compound and drivers driving well within themselves.

I used to love the days when Schumacher used to win by 20 seconds (Well hated it at the time, but it was him I didn't like after crashing into several Williams cars costing champtionships), at least you knew everyone was going as fast as they could.

 

[Bludd]

Apparently they are already sending the message out that Ferrari may lose their automatic $100M payment; presumably that would mean the other "historic team payments" would go as well, but Ferrari get by far the biggest despite the fact they've not won a championship for years. Current contracts are locked in until 2020, though, so its unlikely we will see redistribution of payments before then.

All contracts are locked to 2020 except Renault's which runs longer. It was part of the deal when they returned as a works team, that is, when they took over the Enstone team.

 

[Lightman]

I don't mind paying for F1 if I have to, but I'd be very interested if they did their own internet-based package. The only other alternative in the UK from 2019 is paying for Sky, which is at least £22/month (not including the F1 package), which is too much.

We, working adults might not be bothered by PPV, but that is one of the reasons F1 audience is ageing fast! Only kids with F1 crazy dads can watch races live and knowing kids, they will rather not do same things as their parents.
Better solution would be to allow decent Free to air transmissions and limit PPV for extra access, content, practise sessions and such.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Except nobody is going to pay to watch stuff like practice sessions.

PPV isn't necessarily a bad thing. Netflix requires you to pay, same goes for most cable providers. There aren't a lot of truely free to air channels. At least not in the Netherlands and Japan. Making F1 available through different media is probably more important, being able to watch from your phone/tablet etc.

I wouldn't mind paying ~150 dollars a year if I could watch F1 from major devices such as Android, Firetv, Smart tv etc and I think a lot of fans feel the same. In addition they could do some free online races to try and get new fans or indeed allow them to pay for one race etc.

 

[Davros]

Are there any numbers on how ppv as affected viewing figures ?

 

[cjo]

Are there any numbers on how ppv as affected viewing figures ?

There's been so many other changes that I think it'd be very difficult to get a good picture on how it has changed things.

 

[Davros]

Not too sure, in the uk all of the races are live on sky f1 (ppv)
50% of them are live on free to air tv (channel 4) while the other 50% of races only have the recorded highlights on free tv
so it should be possible to see how many more people watched the races that were free

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Then you should also account for the potential time difference and popularity of a race. I believe channel 4 aired the British, Belgium and Italian GPs. These are probably three of the more popular races. The only real competitor in the same time zone would be Monaco. Most of the other popular races have inconvenient European time slots.

 

[DJ12]

There are only a few that at inconvienient for us, most of them run at odd times of day to make them more palitable.

It's only really Austrailia that is truely inconvienient.

 

[Tahir2]

Mr Ecclestone to launch a new rival to F1 .. allegedly.

 

[Davros]

Will it contain just ferrari ?

 

[Bludd]

Will it contain just ferrari ?

Ferrari will always win of course, but there will be Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lancia and Abarth. When they race in the US, there will also be Dodge and Chrysler.

 

[Davros]

Not sure about Abarth but Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lancia, Dodge and Chrysler are all owned by fiat
edit: fiat owns abarth

 

[entity279]

That was the point, if I understood correctly . Hence 'Ferrari will always win '

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Ferrari is not part of Fiat anymore, since about a year ago.

 

[entity279]

Good point. Still, Ferrari & Fiat have the very same CEO