It was a late dinner last night in Abu Dhabi, what with the busy day and the combination of cultures with frenetic Italians meeting laid-back Arabs. It was nearly one by the time we were delivered back to the fancy – and recently renamed Viceroy Hotel, which was called the Yas Island Hotel. It is the one that the F1 track runs underneath and glitters with lots of coloured lights at night. A big twinkly sausage on a desert island. The bad news was that I had to be in the lobby four and a half hours later and I had a major panic when I saw the whole breakfast area buzzing with life at 05.45, thinking that my watch was wrong, or whatever. In fact there is a big golf tournament going on at the moment with none other than Tiger Woods taking part and they tee off at nasty hours of the morning, presumably to avoid the heat, although it was very cold (for Abu Dhabi). Abu Dhabi has had a few hiccoughs in its development plans because of the global economy (not that they are short of cash, but they just wanted to stockpile a few hundred tons of it, before accelerating onward with their development plans. I read in the paper that the Abu Dhabi Louvre, Guggenheim and a National Museum projects are now rescheduled and the locals hope that by 2017 these will be filled with art, artefacts and (hopefully) tourists. A few hours later (a couple of movies and a doze) and we were back in Paris where the only driving was being done by the rain. Ah, yes, the joys of European winter.
While all of this was going the F1 world had got round to pondering the news that Rubens Barrichello is going to test an IndyCar, while there were reports from Spain that HRT may decide to relocate from Valencia (where presumably the local government is NOT giving them money) to Madrid (where, logically, someone is promising something). It is all very bizarre, but as lots of Iberian commenters are convinced that the team is in safe hands, I really cannot be bothered to question the move. The reports suggest that they will use some kind of a facility at the Manzanares Park Tennis Center, a big stadium known as the La Caja Mágica (The Magic Box) to the locals. I hope that they will be able to pull a very large magic rabbit out of this structure at some point soon.
Those who follow politics and economics might have noticed that now is not a great time to be looking for money in Spain. The latest news is that La Sexta, the Spanish TV station that had the rights to F1, has terminated its deal with two years before the end of its five-year deal, saying that it cannot afford to pay the fees. The rights in Spain actually belong to an organisation called Mediapro, which agreed to pay around $50 million a year to the Formula One group back in 2009. It now needs to find a replacement for La Sexta, which was getting ratings of 3.3 million per race in 2011. The problem is that despite the decent numbers, the advertisers do not seem to have the money to pay for the available slots. Telecinco, which held the rights in 2007 and 2008, says that it is not interested in bidding, while the regional TV stations are all in trouble to some extent of other and are also unlikely to bid.
Spain’s Antena 3 will take over, famous for it’s junk, all Spanish F1 pundits will become advert experts
‘A big twinkly sausage on a desert island.’ I love it
Thanks for that, Joe
If returning to the European winter is getting you down you should’ve stayed and got yourself to watch the cricket. To say there were a few spare seats is a major understatment!
Better to renew the deal for a longer period and ease the cashflow to a smaller more managable number that achieves the original total sum in the long run.
Viewing figures seem tiny considering Spain has a top driver in a top car, a Spanish team and Pedro de la Rosa back racing.
So much for Europe being the home of Grand Prix Racing!
Strawman argument?
Surely there must be a tipping point somewhere down the road where F1 will price itself out of the market. Clearly, at one point the value of F1 to circuits, countries/governments and TV stations exceeded the price being asked by Bernie et al but there seems to be a recurring theme developing which will surely result in F1 having to adjust it’s price of admission or have nowhere to race because nobody can afford, it recession or not.
Here here! it doesn’t have to be as expensive as it is in any aspect – its just a case of cutting your cloth etc. (if thats the correct expression) – eventually the market will decide – it will be interesting to see how Sky get on in the UK
You couldn’t make this up could you.
‘We felt that our interests would be best served by locating to this empty warehouse while we finish off next years cars, because we couldn’t get into the yacht basin. But now, luckily, space has been made available 200 miles away in the middle of the country at a tennis centre, so we’re obviously going to relocate there 4 weeks before we have to run our new cars, which are not yet built’.
They haven’t got the budget of a F3 team have they?
PS – Rubens in Indy –
No No No No No. Not a good idea.
Shame on you F1.
Nonsense… a couple of other likeable but past it drivers should join him.
Indy is screwed.
What’s probably attracting him at the moment is that they currently only have 4 oval races out of 12 on next years calender. Which, granted, could be money for old rope for someone like R.
As regards him personally – he’s still quicker than all but one of the newbies, and as Sam Michael says……..’there’s nothing that can happen at a GP weekend that Rubens hasn’t seen a hundred times over’.
Quick, experienced, one of the best car developers. Yeh throw that away – he’s old innit.
I think IndyCars would be good for Rubens – still get to have his speed fix, but in a much more pleasant and friendly environment than F1. Less travelling from Brazil and his family as well. He has also said that he would respect his wife’s wishes not to race on ovals.
But Rubens would be even better for IndyCar. The death of Dan Wheldon was really horrible for the sport. With newly designed cars and competing engine suppliers they should move forward this year. The other good news is that they will be having much more road course than oval races. The biggest problem they have is lack of TV coverage. Who knows – I might actually watch an IndyCar race this year!
You could say now seems the best time for HRT to ‘relocate’ to Madrid, since they don’t seem to have actually done much in the way of ‘locating’ in Valencia, there’s not so much to undo
Is any time the best time for an F1 team to relocate to Madrid.
Re TV situation – first the BBC and now Spain. I can see a few more along the way if ‘F1′ doesn’t stop pricing itself out of the market. I’ve never believed the worldwide viewing figures and I’m afraid that SKY’s big introductory fanfare will look a little sick if the viewing figures don’t reflect favourably on their investment.
No way back for some of the presenters such as Martin Brundle and Crofty…….
Being Spaniard I can say that I will not be very surprised if it fails to apperar in this season (As a fact, I will be surprised if it appears)
Regarding the TV rights. Mediapro managed to get them by overpaying so it will be very likely that nobody pays their price and we will be without F1 on Spanish TV.
Any “inside” news about getting ready for the season with the “new” F112?
I wrote about that last week.
I know, I meant if there´s confirmation on the posibility of not being able to get a 2012 car on Barcelona´s track or worse.
Should be at the 1st Barcelona Test as long as it passes its last crash test.
Spain’s Antena 3 is already broadcasting F1, at least it is in the Balearics where the commentary is in the Catalan language. The good thing about this is that Marc Gene and Pedro de la Rosa speak both languages and know roughly what they’re talking about, so they get roped in to say the same things in Catalan that they’ve just said to La Sexta in Castilian. The bad thing is that the Catalan coverage is even more amateurish than La Sexta’s, which is saying something. To make things worse, de la Rosa will be unavailable this year, always assuming that a miracle has happened and HRT has produced two cars and got them past the scroots.
The Spanish coverage of F1 has been hilariously incompetent from the beginning. It’s done on minimum resources, focused squarely on Alonso, with none of the dispassionate analysis of the non-Ferrari, non-FA scene that you get from the Beeb or RTL. It’s self evident, too, that the department selling the advertising space is giving it away. At one race last year I counted slots for 11 different car companies and three brands of beer. At the next race most of them had vanished, so we got spots for just three or four products, repeated over and over. You can imagine how wearing this got when the Canadian GP over-ran by a couple of hours but they continued to break for the same commercials.
The lead commentator on La Sexta (he was previously on another channel) evidently also has a commercial interest because two years ago he popped up in virtually every break to front the ads for (honestly!) Nivea cream. At least that was two minutes when you could be sure that he wouldn’t be screaming some inanity about Alonso.
In view of the above, it’s surprising to learn that as many as 3.3 million Spanish people bother to tune into F1. From your report I assume that they won’t be getting any coverage at all this year. The low-quality broadcasts never did any service to the image of F1 and it’s high time Bernie took a close look at the damage that’s being done to his product by the numpties who buy it from him, not just in Spain I suspect. I doubt he’ll do that, although I’m pretty sure that if someone in Spain has stopped sending him cheques he’ll not hesitate to send the boys around.
You should watch Formula One on China TV if you think Spain’s coverage is bad. It’s like watching the news from the 1980′s with two presenters sat behind a desk and advert breaks every 20 minutes.
Antena 3 it´s not the channel emiting F1 in the Balearics, it´s TV3, a regional one.
Thank you for that. It perhaps explains why the bloke from TV3 who appears on screen looks as though he’s been wearing the same shirt all season without bothering to get it washed.
I have to agree, in Spain it´s not F1 coverage, it´s a full on Fernando Alonso for President campaign. My wife always said she felt sorry for Jaime Alguersuari, because even though he was a Spaniard too, they barely took him into account.
It is histerical how everything bad that happened in a race was either Hamilton´s or Red Bull´s fault, and these people actually celebrated on air whenever Sebastien Vettel messed up (at least the 2 times he did, lol).
The commercials were downright pathetic, I´m sure proving they were not getting enough money from sponsors, a couple of car companies, a men´s make-up company and non-alcoholic beer, rinse and repeat, over-and-over-and-over-an-over-again…
It’s probably it little late to reply on all of this now, but referring my earlier posting above, everyone’s comments on TV coverage, like Marthambles here, leads one to strongly suspect that audience figures have been manipulated by ‘F1′ (mentioning no names), and possibly for a long time.
Marthambles – B.E lost the plot long ago. Remember who he works for now. We should all be concerned by this but particularly the teams themselves. Do they not ever watch TV coverage outside to UK or is it that, being based mainly in England, they are used to a better standard ie the BBC/ITV (up until now)?
As the song goes – ‘There may be trouble ahead……’
Joe,
As mentioned in a previous post, do you feel Bernie is getting to a stage where he is pricing out F1′s mainstream audience?
I certainly feel that is the case, the cost of watching F1 on tv and especially going to races just do not reflect the tough times in which the real world is living in currently
We will see.
Oh the twisted irony … two GPs and no TV ?
I must say how impressed I am at Bernie’s endless ability to extract the money (and the p**s) out of these chumps .
Thing is , whether we like it or not , other parts of the world can afford F1 .
The sport is naturally following the money .
Unfortunately , where the money is , the fans aint !
One wonders if there is any mileage in saying that the last place team in F1 is dropped to GP2 and the winner of that series is promoted to F1. This HRT thing is becoming a bad joke on F1, who tries to sell itself around the world as the top motor sports division, yet we see – hear about a team without a base, and one guess no funding to speak of.
How big a step is it to move from GP2 to F1, a part from increases in budgets? We see this type of movement in all major sports around the world, but not motor racing.
Did or does Briatore have any interest in the Spanish TV rights, these days?
“How big a step is it to move from GP2 to F1″
Massive. Its a completely different ball game. The last team to step up from GP2 to F1 was Stewart, who steped up from F3000 (precursor to GP2) to F1 back in the late 90s
The team went on to become Red Bull of course…
If the last team were dropped to GP2 HRT will have nothing to fear. You know the last team for both 2010 and 2011 was Virgin/Marussia so I suppose Virgin should be racing GP2 by now but HRT would be still fine.
If we have these alleged costs – budget controls in F1, then the jump should not be that great. Maybe what needs to be done is bring GP2 up a level or two, so that the “jump” can be made. They do race on some of the same tracks, so not a complete unknown.
If one looks at say football, there is a massive difference in style of play and players salaries between the Premier, and the next level, but still a few teams actually make it, and can stay up. Sure the team have to get use to a new field – pitches. Same in motor racing, learning a new circuit. You will see that new team beef up its staff numbers, and training pitch, as they get more money. Same in F1 – GP2
In a way, it would bring in some new blood / talent – drivers from GP2, who now seem to struggle to get a drive in F1, unless they can bring in $16M worth of sponsorship.
So far no one has explained in simple clear terms how difficult it would be. Maybe Karen can shed some light on this subject, given her insider knowledge of the sport..
“La Sexta, the Spanish TV station that had the rights to F1, has terminated its deal with two years before the end of its five-year deal, saying that it cannot afford to pay the fees.”
La Sexta has not terminated the deal, La Sexta has had its deal terminated due to its inability to pay.
Ah, you’re back! Always useful to have your input.
True, actually she has commented on another article before that, and I already thought you had frightenend her away always mentioning those streets in London just south of Hyde Park….
Thanks for the giggle Cabby!
I must dust off the plans my late partner nixed, and locate in Queen Anne’s Gate, just for the symmetry and cock-a-snook! There’s a nice apartment above one of the offices
I like Karen’s spin. Technically, if the vendor terminates on non payment, that can be argued they are not far off waiving tort for the balance! (depends how you argue it, but I would prefer to just say a customer is delinquent, if that is the case) Plain abrogation seems only to work when you have plenty of fish. That’s why ISDA has such complicated default procedures, and big advertisers never seem to feel ashamed to try to haggle after the fact ..
Are you sure? -As far as I know, Antena3 bought LaSexta recently (for something like 150,000,000€) and at once announced they would cut funding for both F1 and La Liga (Spanish football) due to a bad financial position (in LaSexta), basically they seem to be restructuring the channel.
Lots of broadcasters and circuits in F1 that can’t currenty afford it.
Looking good then !
It surprises me that its taken Bernie so long to approach the optimum pricing, but I guess that what was so confusing is that whenever the price went up everybody just kept paying.
I doubt that it’s finished yet
Echoing some previous coments: Re TV rights in Spain. The end of the Golden Era for the F1 rights holder is happening now. Too expensive to attend the races; not available on TV. Soon the sponsors will realize their market penetration is not worth what they are paying. Governments will see better opportunity to maximize their investment through other vehicles. The downward spiral will result in a lot less multi-millionaires being created by FI fans. Maybe then FI leaders will realize that greed does have a downside.
Don’t think so.
re package, re present, re price, relocate. Then follow the curve.
Many billions yet to squeezed out from the willing sufferers.
The problem that Bernie appears to have, is that with so many contractees out there, all wanting lower fees, if he lets one reduce the amount it pays, the rest will be clamouring for the same treatment.
Good luck to Rubens, although I think it’s a bad move for him.
Peter
That’s not a ‘problem’ when you look at it the other way round
Firstly, welcome back Karen.
Joe, I have always been sceptical about your suggestions that the teams “buy back” F1. This has been mainly on the grounds that teams most likely do not have the free cashflow in order to pay for it.
However, my thinking has shifted a little. it is increasingly likely F1 revenue (at least for the foreseeable future has peaked. Therefore from a private equity point of view, now would be the perfect time to sell out to some “suckers” and take your profit. From Bernie’s perspective, he now has enough money that even his daughters won’t be able to spend it in their lifetime. Nor would he have the inclination to fight through another decade to get the sport back through this coming cycle. So why not sell out now? Perhaps sell to his friends in the Middle East.
I am sure F1 will be broadcasted in Spain, at a big loss for Mediapro, of course.
But better lose a big part of the investment by selling it at a bargain than all of it by not broadcasting it at all…
Telecinco held the Formula 1 rights in Spain from 2004 to 2008.