Germany's long-running pay-TV deal has ended. Although Sky is thriving in the British and Italian markets, the broadcaster will no longer have rights to the sport for 2018 and beyond. "We could not reach the goals that we set ourselves for the negotiations," Sky Deutschland boss Carsten Schmidt told SID news agency.
It means pundit Marc Surer, a former F1 driver, is without a job. "Ultimately it was probably a financial story but it was also about exclusivity and that was not present after the new agreement with RTL," he told Speed Week. Surer explained that pay TV networks want to offer more than free-to-air broadcasters, but that was not the case with the new arrangement between Liberty and RTL.
"Germany is a critical market," Liberty's F1 commercial boss Sean Bratches told Auto Motor und Sport. "They are not ready to break from free TV. I was born in Berlin and a lot of my family lives in Germany," he explained. "My uncle is an avid formula one fan and he would have been pretty angry with me if we went too far." (GMM)
It isnt available on any of the standard channels. Highlights and quali can be seen on TV 10, but that channel is included in packs for some people but not others (e.g it isnt included for me). The full thing is available through Viasat Motor, but you cant buy just the one channel, you need to buy their entire pack, and that thing is pretty expensive. Its quite positive in that regard if F1 starts having their own streams. It'll be much cheaper, and I wont need to pay for channels I'll never use.
Surely this whole Pay-TV thing is complete nonsense.
The Commercial sponsors and F1 advertisers all want the maximum expose and impact from their investments.
Yet Pay-PV just dramatically limits the size of the audience and nullifies the wider impact of all the advertising and this market exposure.
So Pay-TV actually adversely affects the effect of the money the sponsors spend, ie they are virtually mutually exclusive.
The whole business model needs completely re-visiting if F1 is going to have a real future!
Thats my gripe with business people. They dont want to earn money, they want all of the money, every single penny they can milk out of you, and in the process they often end up tanking themselves.
Would you like to stay up to date with the latest Lewis Hamilton and Formula 1 news from GPtoday? Activate free push notifications and be the first to know!
8
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
C. Sainz jr
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Good, Im glad for the Germans. Wish we could get similar luck here in Sweden.