There are some questions being asked in the United States about the date given to the United States Grand Prix in the latest F1 calendar. The November 18 idea sounds fine internationally. It is a week before the World Championship showdown in Brazil and that means that more US fans will be tuning in to watch Brazil – and building up the following for F1 in the United States. That is fine, but it fails to take into account one small problem: NASCAR.
The US stock car series is the biggest sport in the US after NFL football (of the American kind), which is almost certainly having its championship showdown on the same day at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. That date is yet to be confirmed but there is no reason why it should not happen as NASCAR is not afraid of F1. In all probability the NASCAR title will be decided that day and so there will be much excitement. The event is likely to start at 3pm Miami time, which means that it will be 2pm in Austin, the usual time for a Formula 1 kick-off. There is some logic in putting a Formula 1 event on the air on the same day as the big stock car race, so long as they do not clash. There is a chance that NASCAR fans will sit down and watch the F1 before the big NASCAR event, although this will mean that the race in Texas will need to be started at midday. That would be good for Europe as it would hit the prime time slots in Europe. It would also make it nice and easy for the West Coast to watch the action.
The phenomenon of unofficially “twinning” rival events is not new. Every year the Charlotte 600 (these days named after Coca-Cola) and Indianapolis 500 happen on the same day. What tends to happen is that fans watch both. So it may not be quite as stupid as some are suggesting with F1 piggy-backing on NASCAR to build up its fan base.
Some might even call that clever…
joeblogsf1 
I think it would be reasonable to have the F1 race end right before the NASCAR race. It would be at a nice time, at least for me living in Finland, it wouldn’t be at a too late hour
Clever!
This year the NASCAR finale is on EPSN, whilst the F1 race will likely be on Fox (most races are on SPEED with a few per year on Fox itself).
So with the F1 on Network TV there should be more potential viewers for F1 on Fox than the NASCAR on ESPN.
A good start!
Clever it would be…..but we can be fairly sure it wasn’t planned!
Joe,
I hate to say this but November is Football season in the States and the chance of any football fan watching a auto race is slim to none. It’s just not considered a sport (not enough injuries) Rugby would face better odds.
NASCAR has a live 1-2 hour pre-race show that would keep most viewers occupied prior to watching a bunch of yahoo’s ride around in circles at speed.
I think the Texas race will have the same number of US viewers as any other race on the calender, and not many fans at the track (think Phoenix).
Optimistically yours
Joe M.
I think F1’s US media strategy is an even bigger concern than sharing a date with NASCAR. The audiences for these series have little to no crossover, certainly much less than even NASCAR and Indycar.
No, the real problem for F1 is the complete absence from the television airwaves, especially in the nightly news broadcasts. My understanding is that Bernie won’t permit event highlights to be shown on a news program without being paid. Now if you’re trying to increase your audience, you need to be in front of it regularly. In twenty-five years if following F1, I have never seen highlights of any F1 race on my local news here in Chicago, the third largest market inthe States.
The long-term success of the US GP, let alone a second race here requires an aggressive media and Internet strategy on an on-going basis, not just around the week of a national race.
Additionally, Speed tv has the rights to the broadcast here, so a smaller audience has access to all but a handful of races which are shown free over the air on Fox Sports net.
Until Bernie recognizes the need to make F1 accessible to the average sports fan here, F1 will remain a niche sport, relegated to a smaller market on cable telvision.
There is no way on God’s earth that I’d get away with watching two full-length motor races in one day! Are these people not married…?
Not sure about that. But with 38 races a year, it’s hard to find a weekend that doesn’t clash with NASCAR.
I could be wrong, but as a longtime American F1 and racing fan I don’t think there is much market overlap here between F1 and NASCAR. It’s like Neiman Marcus worrying about Sears having a sale the same day as theirs. Not really a factor.
One big difference between the November 18th dates and the Indy 500/Charlotte NA$CAR race on Memorial Day is Indy is held early in the afternoon and NA$CAR is Sunday night. You can easily watch both. In fact many times Monaco is the same date. But these could overlap a little with a time zone difference between Texas and Florida.
Actually one thing to consider is starting the F1 race earlier since the NFL starts at 1PM Eastern and Nobody wants to go against it. Not even the President giving a speech. But that runs the risk of not getting the West coast viewers
Currently in the USA the F1 races are mostly televised live on the cable channel SPEED with four races on FOX (Canada live and three summer races in Europe delayed for four races and somewhat edited..no complete podium or interview sections). Since FOX also has part of the Sunday NFL package, I assume the race will be on SPEED.
A word to the wise, Joe. Don’t swallow the “NA$CAR is the second biggest sport in the USA” nonsense unless you are also willing to swallow the “NA$CAR is the toughest and most diverse series” that Darrell Waltrip gives. They like to tell you on how big the track attendance is (true) and how they out rate the stick and ball sports on tv (true) but leave out there is one race a week versus who knows how many NBA and baseball games available. I am sure the total revenues for baseball and the NBA far exceed NA$CAR, not to mention college football, whose athletes (especially the University of Miami) are probably higher paid than drivers. Which takes nothing away from the growth it had when a few decades ago it was marginally popular series concentrated in the South East.
Hi Joe, I don’t think it will make any difference at all. Not a huge amount of stock car fans venture outside of their comfort zone to other motor sports unless they are true car/racing fanatics and we have to remember that a great deal of them are not fans of the sport just because it is a motorsport but there are several other aspects involved. The death of IROC is a good example of how several fans of Nascar couldn’t be bothered when you take the same drivers they go crazy over week in/week out and put them in a different car with a few other drivers from another US based motorsports series.
Also I don’t think that Nascar is some kind of money making/marketing machine that has got it all right compared to F1. Nascar has failed to sell out most races for about the last 5 years, there are always empty seats even at the biggest most popular races even though they scramble in the last week and try to sell seats for $30. If it was that succesful well known drivers and teams wouldn’t show up with no major sponsors on their car at a major televised race. Also if you talk to a NASCAR fan from 10 years ago most of them barely watch it on tv anymore let alone go, most hate the format now with the race to the chase and most hate most of the drivers as they just don’t compare to the Earnhardts, Jarretts, Wallace’s etc. The same goes for the cars and almost identical templates compared to back when you could easily tell the difference between a taurus and a monte carlo. I don’t think the clash of motorsports will have any affect at all. If F1 was going to catch the interest of NASCAR fans I would say it probably has already done that for those who are going to be interested. The driver swap was great and probably boosted things as does the involvement by NASCAR drivers in the race of champions. Many like motor sports in general but in this country there are two types of sports fans. Those that appreciate sports worldwide and those that only like sports played inside this country.
I would be more concerned about having the F1 race a week before the 2nd biggest travel holiday in the country, Thanksgiving. Even if you are an F1 fan in the US, trying to talk the wife in to two high cost trips inside a few weeks might be hard. That will also affect US tv viewers of the Brazil race a week later on Thanskgiving weekend especially with it being around lunchtime in the US.
In my opinion NASCAR will have about as much affect on the F1 race in Austin as all the other sports going on at that time of year and weekend. NFL, NBA and the hugely underrated College football.
It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out but I think F1 will have a great success here in the US if it takes nothing for granted and pulls out all the stops to promote the show.
Clever but risky. Then again, I’d prefer to attempt that than have the race mid-summer.
Its probably too clever for the powers-that-be in F1, Joe.
Whether its Bernie & his lot unwilling to take a hit to their pride but they have to realisethat NASCAR is THE racing of choice in the USA. Or they really believe that some will watch F1s return to their lands over NASCAR.
Even on a Pub/Bar level, from experience, many times have i been part of a group of people who go into a pub on a sunday and watch the Football match on TV when it starts at 14:00 and stay for the next match which follows 1hr later, even if its not their team playing. If it works in Football (with roughly the same time spent watching the action) then it should work with racing.
A couple of years ago the Republican Party had its annual meeting planned in Indianapolis, on the same weekend as the Brickyard 400 causing a nightmare where it concerns hotel accommodation. So a polite request from the GOP went to NASCAR and he Speedway. Both dully agreed and the race was rescheduled. Now if it would have been the Democrats having their annual meeting ……. For those not familiar with NASCAR/US politics it would have been the Democrats that would have to reschedule.
It certainly works for me when Monaco & the Indy 500 fall on the same day.
Its about the only time I bother with Indycar these days, their silliness with the rules have seen to that.
In the US SpeedTV covers both NASCAR and F1 and there is never an occasion when F1 is not cut short when there is a broadcast conflict with NASCAR. Under the best of circumstances, if both races are held on the same day the F1 coverage will be as limited as possible (ie no pre-race or post-race coverage). If the races were held on different days, SpeedTV might have a bit more extensive “home” coverage and might even consider having their commentators actually at the race. The sad fact is that F1 will not win a viewership or coverage battle with Nascar here and the Austin race deserves a fair shot on its own.
It is the exceedingly rare individual, in the US, at least, that will watch both an F1 race and a NASCAR race. Even if you broaden that to include fans of any open-wheel series that occasionally also watch NASCAR, Homestead is not the draw that Charlotte is.
Steve,
I watch both and I do not see why others cannot.
The solution seems pretty logical doesn’t it?
Great blog this week, keep it up.
If F1 really wants to piggy-back on the success of NASCAR, wouldn’t it be even cleverer to have both races at the same meeting – i.e. one being a support race for the other, with NASCAR bums already on seats and thus a captive audience ready to be converted to the thrills and spills of F1. Or is this beyond the string-pulling abilties of even Mr. E?
Hi Joe, I love your Blog and GP Plus. What have you heard about Lotus and the IRL. I seems no one is home and answering the phone with regards to supplying engines for third of the lineup?
Elisha,
Yes, I heard but I was not kicking them because I could not be bothered to deal with all the pro-Group Lotus abuse that I get if I write anything bad about these goons
Not sure which network will broadcast the final NASCAR race next year but if it’s Fox a “twinning” with SPEED is a natural as they are both owned by ABC.
A perfect day at the races for me!
Whoops, check that, Fox and Speed are under the same umbrella, but NOT with ABC.
Might suit from the TV’s point of view but not such a good idea for the circuit and it’s paying punters.
It sounds ideal for TV viewers for the F1 race to start at 12:00 Austin time, as it would people to watch both races, but it’s not quite that simple. It wouldn’t give F1 an opportunity to be shown free-to-air, as their fta partner, Fox, has NFL football on at that time. That means either the race stays on cable channel SPEED, which would attract few new fans, or it gets broadcast on time-delay on Fox after the football games (around 4:30 New York time) in which case it’s smack dab in the middle of the NASCAR race. Either way it’s a losing proposition for F1, not to mention all the top American motorsports writers are likely to be in Miami and not Austin.
Is F1 going to be broadcast live on US tv? or are they going to get the reduced and delayed coverage we will have in the UK by then?
If it is possible to watch both on the same day consecutively then will they cost the same to watch?
Presumably the entry fees at the circuits will reflect F1 levels, but how do these compare with the ticket prices for the NASCAR event?
I recall reading somewhere that there is also a major Football, Baseball or Basketball match on the same day in the USA.
Commercially astute observation Joe,
NASCAR has always bewildered me. I remember watching a part of a race and some sound effect of a doorbell rang and apparently the fastest driver on that lap would win a pizza from Dominos!
Don’t let Bernie watch NASCAR – he may get ideas!
“big stick car”? I know NASCAR is low tech but they switch to metal fabrication a few years back 🙂
Is there really that much market overlap between F1 and NASCAR? I simply don’t watch NASCAR at all, and I’ve tried, I’ve really tried, to find it enjoyable, but I can’t get past the Boogity Boogity Boogity dumbassery of it all. I could watch a lot more car racing if I could stomach it – it seems to be on Speed Channel nearly 24×7 in some form!
Very important questions! Next year on November 18, I don´t have any idea about where I will be, but this year on November 13, I really hope to be in Abu Dhabi. I expect to win a promo that gives a trip for two persons to go to Emirates and watch Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. To participate, we just have to make a video or a photo showing how crazy we are for this sport with a visual or auditive reference to the advertiser brand. If you are interested, all information are here: http://www.youtube.com/formulasantander .
That really does sound like not too bad an Idea! Have Fox /Speed (whoever of them will broadcast these races) mention to the fans that they can warm up with a bit of open wheel racing on this super new exiting track in Austin, and if maybe a couple of NASCAR fans tune in it might double viewing immediately.
I also heard something about a possible uncomfortable time with the football match that weekend. But from what the Longhorns representatives have previously said, I would think they take it more as an opportunity to cooperate and maybe make it an even better weekend long party!
Joe, I’m here in central Texas 30 minutes from the new Circuit of the America’s track and I’m happy because I know that in June it is hot as hell here (not realy for me because I’m used to it) and I didn’t want to see everybody coming here to just talk about the heat. November is a good time because of the temps but we also have college football (American throwball, since I’m a soccer fan myself) that we’re up aganst. I cannot wait to see an F1 race right here in my backyard.
As far as putting several races here together on the same day, you’re forgetting that the morning (our time here in Austin) of the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 is the F1 race in Monaco. For us race fans, it doesn’t get any better than watchning three forms of racing all in the same day.
I eill go to the F1 race and then watch the NASCAR final.
More worrying though, are the other facts in that article supplied by adamg (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/new-cars/motorsports/formula-one-sets-itself-up-for-another-failure-in-us/article2154788/) that point out that it clashes badly with a couple of local American Football games.
And that aside, although I can see the arguments FOR having it on the same day, the article’s point about the way all the local motorsport writers and coverage will be concentrating on NASCAR and not F1 for the Monday morning papers is a good one, I fear.
Titus Pullo,
College football athletes getting paid??
NCAA athletes are strictly amateur. The best they can get is an academic scholarship and there’s very strict rules imposed by the NCAA on the scholarships. Just last year they stripped USC of their national title and Reggie Bush of his Heisman Trophy for accepting some money from recruiters.
Joe,
Just based on my personal experience, but Oval racing fans and the road/track racing fans don’t really overlap very much in the US. It might make sense for NASCAR/IndyCar oval races to be twinned, but F1 and NASCAR doesn’t. I think the USGP will get viewership around whatever the race at Indy used to get. Hopefully they manage to attract a full house at the race without having to give away tickets.
Second what Shaun said. F1 routinely – to the detriment of its sponsors – under- or mis-estimates the American market. There is no synergy between an F1 crowd and a NASCAR crowd, and no historic basis to believe that one exists. Most people on a Sunday in November are busy toggling between multiple American football games. Austin may have a large trackside audience, but there won’t be any correlation to American viewership until F1 rethinks its marketing (including the absurd pricing of its merchandise). F1 somehow expects millions of people turn on their TV – on a football Sunday the week before Thanksgiving – to watch a race that: (1) is only broadcast on “free” TV four times a year in the US; (2) is rarely, if ever, covered on ESPN’s “SportsCenter”; and, (3) has not one American athlete involved.
A wise man once said “there’s a thin line between stupid and clever”. F1’s shocking insularity prevents it from understanding the North American market. Bernie may consider himself a genius, but the fact that is in 30 years of trying he has never figured out how to crack the the largest market in the developed world. I think F1’s sophmoric response is to view Americans as provincial (i.e., we don’t “get” F1 because we’re not interested in anything beyond our shores).
Joe,
Why are you so bothered about F1 being a success in the USA. F1 will never be successful there, forget about it. The only sports Americans are interested in are those centered around USA. It will take half the races organised in the USA to make it a success there.There are some in the USA who love F1 which is great but why bother to have a big audience interested.
I just can’t get it. Is it for the money ? F1 is already so rich and teams find a way to spend all the money you give them. The only way to save money is to have rules/agreements enforcing savings as is the case now.
If it’s not for the money, well let Americans do what they want. They aren’t fans of the genuine Football yet football survived. I think that F1 will survive as well.
Jo Torrent,
It is obvious. F1 is a World Championship. The United States is the world’s biggest consumer market. It should be there. And if the circumstances are right it will be. The Americans will do what they want but F1 will be smart if it puts itself in a place to be in the US market. And no-one ever accused B Ecclestone of not being smart.
Joe:
What About journalists ? they have to choose wich event they attend and give coverage…
??
I’ll watch both. My favorite Sunday of the year is the Monaco GP, Indy 500, and Coca Cola 600. All pretty much back to back to back. Perfect weekend. Although there is no NFL to contend with. Nascar falls off my radar when the NFL season starts. Hail to the Redskins!
I think Lon and Jonus nailed it. Football programming could be an issue though but I guess that is all solved with Tivo/DVRs. Doesn’t Fox cover Football in November? Doubt they will drop that for the US F1.
Sorry meant Jodum5, not Jonus
@joe: “I watch both and I do not see why others cannot.”
It’s not a case of cannot, it’s a case of do not / will not. I would say there is a higher percentage (of Americans, remember) of open-wheel fans that also watch NASCAR than the reverse, but we’re still talking a teeny-tiny slice of that particular Venn diagram. You’d get more overlap with NASCAR and American football fans.
Not to mention that, comparing the leadership of F1 and NASCAR, I can’t imagine two sports groups who have less incentive to care about the other.
I would think a bigger problem is having the race a weekend before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. A lot of people won’t be able to justify a trip that time of year.
SpeedTV does a good job broadcasting F1 – live practice on Fridays, live qualifying, and live racing on Sunday. But SpeedTV has been an upper tier channel on cable from its beginning and I believe it still is. If F1 is going to increase it’s U.S. fan base even a little, it must get on a network that’s in more homes. That probably means ESPN2.
I remember the first F1 race at IMS. It was not even broadcast on a major network. It was broadcast on all the Fox Sports Net networks and I think SpeedTV. But not on CBS, ABC, NBC, or Fox. I was shocked about that.
There was a time when both the Indy 500 and the World 600 were both daytime races and overlapped. Indy was so popular at the time that NASCAR could not compete since it did not have the same popularity as today. The NASCAR race was a 600 mile race to prove that it was longer and tougher than Indy. The NASCAR race was finally moved to a later time slot to start at dusk and run into the night to attract more viewers. I don’t think that twinning the F1 and NASCAR race will bring F1 that many more new fans.
Joe – interestingly there is much made of the Indians of marginal talent for the race in India, but there are no American drivers for the US race. Obviously the Speed experiment failed, but perhaps one of the teams will revisit the strategy? Or would they have learnt from Peter Windsor?
Joe, Consider yourself an anomoly. Very rare here in the states to have fans interested in NASCAR and F1, both. There is an actual prejudice amongst Boogity folks against F1, as they view their sport as a ‘pinnacle’, and F1 is the obvious example that it is not. So they disdain by ignoring. These are NOT real motorsport fans, as they find aero, set-up, etc to be distractions, and fluffery. They are wrestling fans enjoying it done on a track, with cars. I know, as an F1 guy for the past 45 years I longed for motorsport popularity in the US, and look what I got. Wrestling on wheels. NO tie-in with BUBBACAR is going to work. F1 in the US is a completely separate demographic. I know for all you wonderful Brit fans, it is hard to fathom, but F1 is too sophisticated, too elitist, too ‘Euro’ for the American egalitarian taste.
There will be no tapping into this large demographic, it is illusory, despite best plans or intentions. The american public already has what it wants, and it’s not F1. I dont like it, but have long since learned how much that matters to my countrymen and women.
So, this is all really a non-issue. Put the race on Fox for a wider audience and what do you get? No pre race show with interviews and background, no post race podium or interview of podium finishers, commercial breaks timed to maximally interrupt the race at the most inopportune times, and race commentary dumbed down to ensure cringe-worthy comments throughout. I HATE watching the races on Fox.
F1 and the US? Shoot for the significant but small minority of fans that do exist. And give them a bit more than the current bread and water diet of F1 to which they have long been accustomed.
-Lifelong F1 fan and open wheel racer (SCCA)
dockjkm,
I disagree. All Americans need is a reason to like F1. That could be a driver or a team. If Danica was in F1, you think the fans would not watch. Of course they would.
Here’s the deal. Fox does not broadcast NASCAR at the end of the season. That will be on ABC. Fox only broadcasts NASCAR for the first roughly third of the season, after which it starts concentrating it’s free to air F-1 broadcasts, then it starts getting into NFL. NASCAR is taken over by TNT for the middle of the summer before ESPN/ABC takes over the balance of the season. I do watch both, as the races don’t conflict (only the four free to air broadcasts by FOX do conflict; I wish they would show them live like SPEED does. What I dearly wish is that we could get BBC’s coverage of F-1. SPEED, while they do a fairly good job, tend to have kind of low energy broadcasts, since the guys calling the race are sitting in a studio in Charlotte, NC, watching the timing and scoring on the F-1 website, and the world feed. So they have very little breaking news to offer. They can’t even be bothered to send the team up to Montreal for the Canadian GP. There are enough “stick and ball games played throughout the F-1 season, so the conflict there won’t be any more than normal. Sports fans in this country tend to either watch motor racing or Football/Basketball/Hockey/and Baseball. Maybe that’s why F-1 has such a hard time “sticking” over here. There is simply too much else on our plates.
Maybe it’s another example of F1 arrogance, expecting Americans to automatically watch and abandon NASCAR.
I’m not holding my breath!
What it really comes down to is that SpeedTV, owned by Fox, the major NASCAR broadcaster, is going to be wall-to-wall NASCAR finale. MAYBE, they might wait to start F1 coverage until after they get NASCAR kicked off to the main network.
The F1 race will be an afterthought for the television audience. SpeedTV has been known to abruptly end the live broadcast after the checkers in favor of pre-race NASCAR coverage. Which means that you’re down to track attendance, which is going to be a bit weird too, because they’ve scheduled the race for the weekend before Thanksgiving.
And on Memorial Day Sunday, you get the Monaco GP in the morning, the Indy 500 in the afternoon, and the Coca-Cola 600 in the evening. No collisions, no mess.
So, as usual, the sport talks a big game, but nobody actually puts in the effort to lay the groundwork to make it happen. Once F1 puts on a successful race in the US for a decade running, then we’ll talk.
Joe
For me life isn’t a market, it’s much more than that & F1 isn’t a world championship. It was a European championship & it has been transformed into a UK vs Ferrari championship plus some relatively talented drivers with relatively rich parents to allow them to reach F1. These drivers are from Europe & Brazil. (Karun & Narain aren’t really F1 drivers)
How do you call that a world championship, I don’t know. The FIA or Bernie might call it the F1 world championship or galactic championship but we shouldn’t believe them, should we.
This is a championship without Africa (nothing new there) & with Asia and South America contributing only with Sponsors. If it is about the Sponsorship than I have to agree with you it is the FIA Sponsor World Championship.
The European Football Champions League is a competition with a worldwide reach. It’s still recognized as a European competition despite so many players from all over the world.
A lot of people are commenting on the lack of overlap between fanbases, but I think the point is that F1 has to find a way to draw from the NASCAR fanbase if it wants to increase its interest in the US. Honestly though, the only chance F1 has in the states is to do a deal with ESPN (likely ESPN2) to broadcast the races. F1 would likely have to settle for no money from ESPN, or possibly even pay them (not something I can see Mr. E doing), but exposure on ESPN is a must. That would give the influential writers and tv personalities at ESPN an incentive to talk about F1, and it would ensure F1 gets a decent showing on the popular “Sportscenter”, of which it currently gets next to none unless there is a scary accident.
Another point of view:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/new-cars/motorsports/formula-one-sets-itself-up-for-another-failure-in-us/article2154788/
Jo Torrent,
i am a bit confused by your thinking. Africa hasn’t had a go at F1 since Kyalami (hope i remember that right, and don’t think it was a championship race even then) but SA has descended into depth of corruption the PC “police” have been very good at hushing. Simple: look elsewhere nearby.
Also i do not think that South America is disenfranchised at all. Rich sponsors can be from anywhere, i don’t think who they are affects the racing much, nor do i think because a country has some companies who can afford that, and think it a good idea, is comparable to considering that financial input a sporting constituency. If anything, F1 sponsorship thrives by being backed by a handful of absolute global players, just the kind who would be sensitive if they thought it too parochial.
Absolutely, we must get GPs going on properly in all these places. Joe’s “fantasy calendar” article did a good job of explaining that, and managed to say things for where i think you believe are disadvantage in grand prix terms, at the same time as emphasizing the European origin of the sport, where i guess there may be some fans feel it’s being lost to them, as historic tracks fade into memory. Friends of mine who are either born there or very happily living in Asia, several parts, think F1 is a big, or at least significant, feature in their calendar, including who are not (yet!) fans. (forgive me my sample bias, obviously about anyone i talk to will be exposed to F1) Though i get very uncertain messages from China, maybe because it’s just new enough there, and my impression is who i talk to thinks it very strange. But they read this blog!
I just don’t suss how you think F1 is not a proper worldwide game. If i’ve misread you, apologies in advance from me, but that’s how i hear your words.
I’ve got a separate little story, which Kyle Ward might relate to, about overlapping or even unrecognized fanbases, but it’s related to GP+, so if i can, i’ll leave a vignette attached to that article. I guess i’m glad i am not a statistician trying to get to the real numbers on F1!
ESPN is the brand to be on, for sports broadcast. I’d not really thought of it that way, because the only other sport i love is almost never on telly. But a quick search suggests they do broadcast college squash in the US. Which is to my mind a good start. Kyle’s point is really relevant. It should have been ESPN getting highlights, or rebroadcasts or whatever, not the BBC / Sky unknown thing. I think without any shadow of a doubt, the BBC did not know what they had to trade with. They do have a separate commercial arm, known to be highly aggressive, but obviously the F1 coverage is under remit of the political types. What is different though, is that i think most people who subscribe to Sky of whichever service, they are fanatical followers of one s[port or another. Obviously Soccer is the driver for that in British parts. Then, how much else do you really want to watch? If i was going to “bribe” ESPN to carry F1, i’d want to make sure it had a regular mention on their general news reportage, as much as footage to see, as the news will get the big numbers, start to attract off chance and new viewers. Hmm, Sky can do the same thing, they have Sky Sports News and i see that as a default in pubs and bars, so there is possibility to push recognition of F1. If they bother. I am inclined to think the BBC gifted the golden goose to who won’t care to feed it.