Bad news for F1 fans. The FanVision company, previously known as Kangaroo TV, has been unable to agree terms with the Formula One group to continue to provide its personalised TV units for individual fans at race tracks around the world. The problem, inevitably, was money. The company has struggled in the course of its five-year contract to create interest with prices that were seen as being rather too high, although teams and their sponsors used the systems to great effect. For the last couple of years the prices have been coming down and demand has increased, while the company was also working deals with promoters to include the units in the ticket price.
That service is now gone and while FanVision will go on in NASCAR, NFL and golf, Formula 1 will either have to develop its own systems, which will be complicated in legal terms, or the fans will simply have to do without and go back to relying on diamond vision screens and commentary.
joeblogsf1 
Certainly not good news for those of us that invested in a unit in the belief that the product was too good for F1 to allow the business to fail………
Presumably BCE will be buying the assets out of administration?
I doubt it. FanVision is a not dependent on F1. It has deals with NASCAR and various other sports.
Not a very good news!
i used FanVision at the USGP and found that the product was quite good. they offered use friday for free and only charged if you kept the unit past 5PM. i figured this was a good way to see if it was worth the price.
i used it sporadically, but my son LOVED it. your news is too bad, i though that it had great potential in the future.
FOM high-handedly screwing the true fans (those who attend races) no doubt in the pursuit of cash. Fanvision was a great tool and quickly became essential in following the detail of the race – given the limited facilities in the stands. (it is amazing how small ‘giant’ screens get when they are so far away! – and the tannoy systems at Monza, Spa and Silverstone must date from the 1960’s)
This is bad news. When I went to the Belgian Grand Prix, I had one for the Sunday of the race and it made a huge difference to be able to see the race, hear the commentary and read the telemetry 😦
I wanted to try it in Korea, but they didn’t offer it last year. Was it good?
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot… with all the stuff about technology that you were posting about the other day, looks like other sports will be ahead of the technological game.
Joe, would you be able to say a bit more about why FOM developing its own system would be complicated in legal terms?
I’ve been to 6 Grands Prix at Silverstone, Spa and Monza in recent years and have never used one of the devices, mainly due to them either having not been invented at the time or due to not wanting to pay the extra cost.
For me, as long as you’ve got a giant screen (and some binoculars so you can actually see the graphics) you’re fine. I find being able to see the cars every lap helps enormously in my understanding of what’s going on, almost to the extent that i don’t require commentary. Though without pictures, i think i’d be a bit lost.
On the other hand, I can see why, perhaps, Fan Vision – or something similar – existing would make fans more willing to bother going to a race for the first time, if they knew they weren’t going to miss out on the info they get while watching from the sofa.
That’s a shame, I used Fanvision for the first time in Singapore 2012, and thought that £50 was reasonable-ish for three days use. The problem is that if you can see a TV screen, you can get away with not needing it. Apart keeping track of quali times, I didn’t really make use of it during the race.
Had it been a GP where the seating was further from the track and I couldn’t see a TV screen very easily, it would have been much more necessary.
Was the problem that Fanvision weren’t making enough money from F1, or that FOM fees were too high, or a combination of both ?
Always the same story with Ecclestone. Too greedy to see things properly through.
This is a Bernie issue. Ticket prices are already way too high for fans to even think about spending more on TV while in the grandstands.
Quite right. £300 (approx) for a race day grandstand seat for barely 90 minutes of F1 action, then to see the full story you have to pay another £50 ? It might be peanuts to Bernie, but not to the rest of the spectating public.
Disappointing, but not unsurprising. I first used the system in 2006 at Monza, I’ve always been impressed with the service. It’s a shame the company did not meet its targets.
Whilst I’m sure money contributed to Fanvision being unable to reach terms with FOM for a continuation of the contract, I think it’s a fair reflection to say the technology industry has moved on quite considerably from when the company originally put together its business model.
With today’s technology in smartphones / tablets, ignoring data usage costs, a fan could watch race coverage on their own devices. A logical development could be for FOM to develop an app for race goers to tap into the world feed at a race events (for a fee of course!) maybe Tata Communications could start work on that!
If my experience at Monaco is anything to go by, current mobile networks can’t support the kind of bandwidth needed by thousands of fans all using their phones. Presumably worse at most out-of-town race circuits.
100,000 people all streaming at once? Going to be a challenge. 4G and all that might help, but phone resolutions will increase too over the coming years, so desired streaming resolution will step up and demand will just keep gobbling up whatever supply is there.
A smart person might talk to FOM and the circuit owners about installing wifi in all the stands and crafting an app allowing streaming of the race and data on a local network. Doable, but hard to arrange the hardware and the connection to the TV feed. Lots of stakeholders.
That’s basically my thoughts exactly – FOM should produce an app that works on iOS, Android and Windows mobile devices that would enable users to select camera views, telemetry and language specific commentary. They would need the circuit to provide sufficient WiFi access but the app could be a free add on for all ticket holders to encourage people to attend races. They could even generate revenue from allowing sponsored adds to appear onscreen, with some people choosing to pay a small fee to be able to use the app ad free.
If they really cared about the race goer then they could also include additional features which although not directly related to the race, could be of interest to the attending public, such as an interactive map of the venue showing locations of toilets, first aid centre Etc.
What a wonderful idea.. Oh no, wait. this is F1. You can’t even watch highlights online else it’ll get pulled off youtube by FOM.. A painfully outdated media model with a painfully outdated octagenarian, pulling the strings. though someone could send him a telex with your ideas for iOS and Android apps….
PS: Anyone here use the £20 per year F1 timing app ?
I use the F1 app on my iOS devices. When I attended the Melbourne GP at the start of 2012 I took my iPad with me and used the app to track what was going on. However as I had to stream the data via 3G rather than Wifi it didn’t quite last the race from a full charge. On Wifi at home I have no problem getting through a whole race with it.
I would have used it at Singapore later in September as well, but didn’t get organised enough to get a local SIM when I arrived and I wasn’t going to pay international roaming fees for the amount of data I’d have consumed watching the race on the iPad on my own SIM. Would have cost me more than my accomodation, flights, meals and GP tickets combined!
So I ended up using the Fanvision. I thought it was a great product and it’s a shame to hear that it’s no longer available.
Similar experiences here. I have the timing app on tablet (original Asus Transformer) and on my phone (HTC Sensation) and it’s very handy. I often have my tablet with the times up and my phone propped up against it showing the map, because I’m so damn lazy I don’t want to lean forward to press the button and flip between the two views.
But taking my phone to Monaco saw it struggle to keep up due to bandwidth issues and then the phone simply died. That and I was taking endless photos and making my friends envious on Facebook.
That is very disappointing. The Kangaroo TV’s where indispensable. Now I have to be at a race with less timing info than sitting on my couch at home.
That is a real shame as it was very useful at our first F1 outing to Belgium 2012. We split the cost between 3 of us so it wasn’t expensive really (45 quid I think for weekend).
It was the only way to really know what was happening (and explained why so few cars made it to the first long straight!)
The big TVs are ok but you get zero context and stats which F1 leans on as part of the fun. In this day and age not having fanvision is shameful. We can’t have ALL the technology in the VIP areas and track!
Nice to see that the fans who spend a ton of money to visit a circuit really are better of staying at home.
With everyone and their dog having smartphones and tablets, aren’t the days of dedicated units like FanVision numbered?
A relatively easy solution would be circuit wide wifi (the most difficult part) and an ios/android app that does what FanVision did. In the meantime a lot of people could make do with their local tv broadcast on their device (provided their broadcaster gives them that ability).
One of the positive features of the Kangaroo was that it uses broadcast UHF (in Europe anyway). It even worked some distance away from the track so you could watch support races from outside the circuit while sampling non-Bernie approved food and beverages.
Circuit wide Wi-Fi would be neither trivial nor cheap to implement and would be inferior to using broadcast UHF.
Also, using the SoftPauer F1 app on my iPhone over Wi-Fi drains the battery and there is no possibility of using it all day one a single charge. This was not a problem for the Kangaroo.
A large group of people at a circuit using their phones and tablets to view content over 3G/4G/LTE is not going to work. People travelling from abroad are not going to want to pay the roaming charges.
International data charges are very high and coverage at venues like Spa can be patchy.
But I agree it’s probably the next logical step, if you assume there is any with this decision..
Joe has in the past called me old and a Luddite…. But to prove there is nothing much that is new I can remember lugging a ghetto blaster with a 3″ Black and White screen in it, around Silverstone in the early 80’s to watch a race. Funny being sat at the end of the hanger straight and if something happened and was reshown on TV the 30 people in seats nearby would lean over as hard as they could to watch the replay from the BBC! Yes, this was before diamond vision screens. Sorry Joe, showing my age again!
If you look at the postings here, people want the commentary, timing, replays etc. and a better look than the diamond vision screens at the track can provide. They are not too worried about being able to switch to the shot of Hamilton in the pits. Basically they are doing what I did years ago with something of slightly more practical overall size and the picture is in color.
Work, travel and my wife wanting to take vacations can interrupt getting to watch the race live on TV. So when the slingbox first became available I got one. I can watch a race, and have, anywhere! I can watch my TV located at home in an airport on my smart phone or with my wife driving, heading out on vacation on the laptop all via this cool little device that streams my TV over the internet! Sure it was an investment of $100 and I have the luxury of all you can eat home and phone data plans, but the Kangaroo was doomed anyway.
Bernie wants too much money and if you really want the uses most here seem to have used it for, then there are alternatives. This assumes 3 or 4 g cell service is worth a damn at the track. But I have been in a car going up I-95 in the US and watched a full race uninterrupted! It can be done! Wife gets the vacation and I am not cranky because I have to watch it recorded later, Win, Win!
Bernie’s greed and alternatives for the people that want this service, mean it was never going to be viable long-term. The prices would have had to gone down with a better data stream and video than you can get from other sources or its days were numbered.
Joe if you said “what is a slingbox…………?” you could be showing your age too!
I’m an old git so it doesn’t bother me, what’s a slingbox????
http://uk.slingbox.com/go/home
with a number communications and technology sponsors, not only is circuit wide wifi practical but it’s a brilliant marketing opportunity – Vodafone should be jumping at this chance.
Vodafone as a company have no real Wi-Fi strategy believing that cellular data is the future.
Besides, Wi-Fi is not the solution to providing a limited number of high bandwidth streams (and data streams) to a large number of devices over a area beyond 200m. 3G/4G is not a solution either. A number of posters here have suggested using what is essentially unicast IP will work but really broadcasting the streams and data over UHF is the best solution.
That’s really sad news. At Austin, fanvision sold out, allegedly the first time they’d sold out anywhere. I used one and found it a valuable aid. A friend at the race with me – his F1 event ever – had a terrific time switching between the views of Vettel and Hamilton during that battle. So it helped make a fan of him.
Which brings me to the other opportunity not taken by F1 – the second screen at home. While the F1 app for the iPad is pretty useful, it’s not that much different from what you get via any browser. There is no reason that the full fanvision experience couldn’t be streamed to customers around the world – other than money, marketing vision (the absence thereof) and politics. I can imagine many ways in which it could be a charged for app – perhaps with some of the revenue going to the local TV broadcaster to offset the risk people might use this instead; or released via the local broadcaster.
A huge waste of potential marketing, goodwill and fan engagement. I suggest Adam Parr be given the Bernie job when he goes……
Cheers
I believe Sky in the UK allows for switching views and so on and so forth with their TV and/or streaming services – someone on here must know?
Yes and they also allow you to access the service on the Monday night full race replay. I watch the race normally on the Sunday (with live timing) then on Monday watch the onboards and pit channel to pick up what I missed.
Yes they generally have a pitlane view and highlight a number of onboard cameras if you want to stick to one driver.
I used one of these units at a NASCAR race in Richmond VA a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Too bad they couldn’t come to an agreement with F1.
How crap is that.
The first thing I always did on arriving at a circuit was seek out the Kangaroo guys and then hold on to the unit for the full meeting.
Hang it round your neck or hook it on your belt and you’re always in touch. You could walk around to different part of the track or just hang around the paddock but still know – AND SEE – everything that was happening, As it happened. Many a dull race has been given new life to me by watching the times between cars move up and down as the race progressed.
You could see the strategy start to unfold as the hundredths moved back and forward, then became tenths, then whole seconds etc etc.
And the number of people I had to share the unit with during the race was unreal. It was a real winner.
One thing was surprising though, how few people at every race I visited year after year had still never heard of the Kangaroo – mostly non-Brite it has to be said.
I’m lucky in that I have the time to travel to most GP, and have done for the last 10 years – often visiting all the races in a season.
I don’t relish the idea now however of paying through the nose – not only for the ticketing but also air tax and/or petrol, to go and sit in the corner of a field with the rain belting into my face while listening to a barely understable commentary from a windblown loudspeaker, while squinting at a too small TV screen at a 50 degree angle. All the while hoping that something ennervating will happen on the 150m of track that you can see.
Sorry – No.
Better things to do than suffer on the day anymore. Better to just pull it up on the computer when I want to see it.
A lesson that I’ve learned since the BBC lost all of the races. I now get every other weekend off to do other things – gym, actually go away for the weekend to other race meetings etc, and still catch the GP Sunday.
It’s not that the ‘powers that be’ don’t want spectators, but as an ordinary spectator we don’t actually contribute enough to the bottom line for them to be bothered about us.
Literally, We’re just not worth it.
‘Better things to do than suffer on the day anymore. Better to just pull it up on the computer when I want to see it.
A lesson that I’ve learned since the BBC lost all of the races. I now get every other weekend off to do other things – gym, actually go away for the weekend to other race meetings etc, and still catch the GP Sunday.
It’s not that the ‘powers that be’ don’t want spectators, but as an ordinary spectator we don’t actually contribute enough to the bottom line for them to be bothered about us.
Literally, We’re just not worth it.’
PERFECTLY put. Bernie et al couldn’t give a flying fork about us fans. Agree with you about the bbc coverage too. I’ve found myself not losing half the sunday afternoon and just watch it later on. In fact, I found myself not caring much for it the whole weekend. would just wait til the sunday night to watch the edited highlights of the exciting bits.
Imagine if that had been the case in the 2000-2004 Schumacher Ferrari era, i’d not have needed to watch ANY of it !
Sorry, that should be ………………mostly non Brits.
Not
non Brites !
In my previous posting.
No offence to you non Brites. Just a bit dark in here.
A lot of us Brites heard it from JA and/or whoever did the commentary because it always mentioned Kangaroo at the end of the radio R5Live broadcast.
Greed over fan base!!!!!
I tried one in Montreal and was unimpressed. Cost, as noted, was high ($75, if I remember) and the sound seal on the ear plugs was inadequate for the job, so it was hard to hear the audio. I did enjoy the stats and multiple camera angles. I’d do another one, but not for that steep a price.
Bad news indeed. I’ve been getting one since they’ve started. First thing I did when I got to the track on a Friday Morning. Very very useful, and great to have the BBC/Sky commentary when away from home, esp when trackside audio can be difficult to understand or hear.
Great talking point with those who had never seen one as well
Unless FOM have been working on their own system already, then even if the legal situation is not a show stopper, I suspect it woud not be ready in time for the start of the 2013 season.
Only other way for 2013 might be some kind of WiFi provided by FOM, and rely on the fans own Android and iDevices. That would end up being a track by track RF enginerring exercise, and wouuld have to handle far more devices, not to mention contention
(I suspect fanvision were sending things in a broadcast fashion to all units, and the user selected the streams they wanted to see and hear, where as any WiFi will be the full entire stack to/from each device] 80-100k devices on WiFi at Canada makes me shudder 🙂
Oh well, Now to work out much data would be needed for the Android timing app, and how much of my money Vodafone will want for that for each of Canada and Belgium!
That’s too bad. We tried the Fan Vision at the USGP and the only complaint my wife and I had was that we didn’t get 2. I’ll miss it this year if there’s not an alternative.
wow, that is a bit of a shock! Really was a great tool at the race track.
I didn’t find the price particularly high and thought it was worth its weight in gold! Can we start a Kamui model to buy F1??
Not as remote a possiblity as you may think my friend.
Apparently North American teacher’s and pensioners now own 9% of FOM. Teachers Retirement System of Texas $200m and the Canada Pension Plan $400m.
I say let’s give it a go – we don’t need all the shares, the teachers and pensioners will side with us 😀 – only about 66% to go then.
Don’t count on it. The teacher’s pension ownership of the NHL Toronto Maple Leafs was known for inept performance and high ticket prices. Bernie at least did some racing in the 1950s. One of the main pension guys was so ignorant that when a colleague from Montreal joked “if we were going to buy a hockey team, we should have bought the Habs”. Didn’t have a clue that Habs is a nickname for the Leafs historic rival Montreal Canadiens
🙂
Well it certainly makes buying your own unit a rather poor investment… Good job most of them were expensed, I guess.
This really sucks. At the USGP it was the only way to get good live stats since there was no cellular service. I hope something replaces it.
This is very bad news & makes me angry that there is a technology out there that isn’t being used! A plague on both their houses …
I used Kangaroo TV (as it was then) in Spa a couple of years ago for the full weekend and found it invaluable. The race would have been a lot harder to follow without the choice of screens & BBC radio commentary – in fact a couple staying in the same place as us didn’t even know who made the podium!
I was actually thinking of heading to Monza this year, but this is making me think twice as you do miss a lot of race detail without it. Races can be hard to follow without commentary / insight!
Joe, should this be taken as a final decision or is it a bargaining position?
I used it at the last French GP-brought my own headphones-listened to the BBC commentary in English during the race. It was invaluable for keeping track of the cars after pitstops. It gave an explanation and understanding of Hamilton’s drive-thru penalty and Kimis’ reduced pace due to loose bodywork.
You could follow lap times onscreen and see a battle shaping up even before the cars were near one another. How else can you get this information? It was too loud to hear the PA-which was in French!
I use a scanner at all races here in the US…if there is no broadcast then I listen to race control. It adds depth to the event.
This is a shame-the Kangaroo people were great to us and very enthusiastic about their product.
That, or just stream the race – illegally, but available – to your 3G phone.
Good luck with that when there are 30,000 others trying to do it.
It’s still showing on their website as of this evening, no mention of the pull-out.
http://www.fanvision.com/f1
Take it from me.
I wasn’t querying your info, Joe, I just went to have a look and it was still on there. Sorry if it sounded as if I didn’t believe you.
The fanvision hardware and staff seriously rocked. They were always awesome to deal with. Great people who went above and beyond to get me a unit even at races where they didn’t have a presence.
Didn’t watch the race so much as listened. These guys are going to be sorely missed.
Maybe the crafty old fox has something like this up his sleeve. Found this in twittersphere with comment ‘platform, business plan and marketing complete’ http://www.raphaelcampos.co.uk/portfolio/f1fancentre/
Problem is 3G is woeful at most circuits I’ve been to and Joe reports you even have to pay for WIFI in the media centre at others.
Unless Tata have a secret plan to blanket 10 square kilometres with the world’s biggest WIFI ever or boost 3G incredibly – it won’t work.
Then we’ll need charging points everywhere as video streaming batters battery life (pun intended)
Hey hoh, but as long as TV land is happy, FOM is happy too. Screw the fans huh?
Hi Joe
Doesn’t this symbalise what is wrong with FOM – this is the 21st Century and of course we constantly told this is the pinnacle of motorsport, and they should be gagging to get this type of media into fans hands at a GP. With high ticket costs, circuits finding it impossible to make money and would rather not host a GP to save money, its just makes no sense ! Don’t forget how long it took for us to HD quality TV from the circuit. Just beggars belief at how out of touch the “Ivory Towers” are with us mere mortals who want to see and hear the sport live, and want a small device to offer us coverage because we cant the big screens ………. What happens when the circuits just No – we are not paying these fees? Will FOM says its everybody elses fault. And whilst having a rant about FOM, we still don’t know where and how many races we have in 2013. How do you are a journalist plan your flights and hotels ?
*facepalm* F1 shoots itself in the foot AGAIN. I sometimes wonder why we bother…
I am starting to question that myself and i’ve been into F1 since 1984..
Well Ernie, that sucks, thank you! Continue with your plan to:
1. move races to places with no audience.
2. increase the prices beyond reach for the places with actual and real fans.
3. Reduce the services to those real fans.
The actual cost of this thing to FOM is probably close to nil in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe Montezemolo has a point.
Nascar is broadcasting their Daytona testing sessions, with tv production, free online streaming and all. Yes, 21 hours of Nascar testing is now available to watch. Different brands of motorsport certainly cater to their fanbases differently.
There is probably more interest in seeing the new car models in Nascar, as well as taking advantage of a renewed broadcasting contract with Fox, you end up with some reasons for broadcasting this years testing.
It would certainly be nice to see live F1 testing in 2014 with the new formula, as a rise in interest could not only make it financially pertinent, but make an F1 fan happy without being gouged.
What will happen when the fans catch on that they can watch the race (while at the race) on their android/iPhone through downloadable apps? The live streaming ability to your phone is already here. In my area we have two major companies who are both vertically integrated entertainment groups (Cable/SAT/Mobile/Content producing/TV Channels) – one of whom has the rights to show F1 over their own ‘over the air’ channel. In the USA – SPRINT is already offering this service to it’s customers for NASCAR events via 4G mobile phones. Kangaroo (and like companies) will roo (pun intended!) the day they spent so much on their hardware without thinking about the future and the 4G/LTE world.
You clearly haven’t been to a Saturday/Sunday F1 event at a circuit. The FanVision device has about 4 hours of battery life and you are given a second battery as part of the package.
FanVision covers each day the GP3, GP2, Porsche Supercup and F1 practice, qualifying and races.
Unless FOM are about to spend fortunes on re-charging points, nobody’s mobile devices have the battery life to deliver what FanVision does.
In Monza this year, we drained the life out of both batteries on our set on the Saturday and Sunday.
Most people I know would have about 90 mins of battery life on their mobile device – not enough to even get most races in full.
Further, the cost to FOM of upgrading the 3G currently available in the vicinity of most circuits would be enormous. I couldn’t even tweet a 140 character message plus a picture unless I was in one of the very few and small WIFI areas. Streaming TV? – you’ve got to be joking.
Then how many times do I have to pay for F1 viewing access. I have a SKY subscription which allows me to view on 2 mobile devices any of their sports channels – CATCH – as long as I’m in the UK.
I can’t access my paid up subscription unless I’m within the geographic area where my F1 TV provider owns the commercial rights.
NASCAR is a different proposition. Most fans go to the race only and the first 80% of the race nobody cares about because anything of importance that may affect the result happens in the last 30 mins of the race.
I sat in Monza about 300m before the Parabolica – Jenson broke down in front of us – in a general admission area. Everyone within sight was watching the race and hardly moved. Many with FanVision
NASCAR events I’ve attended, people are chatting, drinking, BBQ-ing and pretty much doing anything other than intently viewing the on track action. A 30 minute viewing burst on a mobile device is all you need to see all the important stuff at the end of the race. Plus its an oval – and so use binoculars and a radio.
App’s are light years away from being anything other than utterly useless at an F1 weekend – unless Tata are about to deliver wireless connectivity never seen before on planet earth over an area of some 5-6 square km.
Hey, but we fans keep taking it up the a*%s home or away – and Mr. E will keep sticking it up there as long as we allow him.
Footnote: Corporate land will also be hit hard. Most corporate ‘F1 uneducated’ guests get a FanVision. Try understanding in the race which tyre compound 22 cars are running and who is leading when we’ll be having the 2 pit stops per race Pirelli want this year. #noideawhatsgoingon – get bored and go to the bar.
I’m sure mobile technology will be the answer – one day – but I suspect this is a – ‘sod em if they have to wait a year or so till we get our s*&t together and deliver a replacement viewing system – so be it”.
This is why I go to testing each year. 10-20 euro’s entrance fee, 8 hours of screaming V8’s daily… the sights, the sound – and racing is best understood on TV.
PS The weekends I’m at a race weekends working – I have a FanVision. So does Ted Kravitz, Gary Anderson, Lee McKenzie and a whole host of other working F1 people.
FanVision improved battery life significantly last year, so I fear that your comment is no longer valid.
And even if you did run out of battery the reps were always ready to swap out a dead battery for a new one.
Actually I’d say that the three or four times I used a Kangaroo TV/Fan Vision, I found the staff to be really friendly and efficient. What a shame for them.
You could watch on your ipad etc if the circuits installed pervasive wifi all around the circuit. They could even charge 375 euros for the race weekend for usage to give fans that authentic “press experience” 😉
+1 coded
Clumsy tech. It would be better – oh so better – to offer live streaming for tablets and smart phones – for a price, of course – so that fans around the world. either trackside or tucked up in bed at 3am – could watch live vision; either any drivers’ car cams or the main race feed.
Now I would pay hundreds of dollars per year for that sort of service.
I used one in Montreal in 2007 and liked it despite having seeing problems in Sunday’s sun Took awhile to figure out the controls. Didn’t see it for rent when I was back in 2011. I wonder if they could make a larger screen….ipad or nook size.
Although there’s an instinctive reaction of FOM greed being at the root of this, FOM would have known during the negotiations that, if they had no replacement in the offing, they were choosing between $xxx from FanVision or $zero. Choosing the $zero option would be stupid, rather than greedy. If we start from an assumption that FOM are not stupid, doesn’t that point to a liklihood that they have an alternative plan that will bring them not $zero but $>xxx from a source other than FanVision?
No.
Changing the subject very slightly for a moment, there is a tendency when men clamp their front derailleur around their seat tube, for them to prove how strong they are by destroying their frame (the metal is quite thin at that point). This does demonstrate strength, but it can’t be considered to be very clever.
These negotiations may have demonstrated a similar tendency – the FOM negotiators seemingly showed how tough they were by homing in on $zero income as a result of having attempted to achieve $xxx + $???. But is that really the way to become a billionaire? Or does it perhaps just show that even a very successful gambler sometimes loses?
This is really shite.
I have tried to follow practice and and the race at melbourne using F1’s own apps but as the previous posters mentioned there was no data coverage. Too many people overloading the data networks. Even tried 2 different telecom companies over 2 years with the same result. Last year we went with the Fanvision and they were brilliant. Had all the data that we needed plus the live TV with different cameras to choose from. It wasn’t perfect but it added immensely to my enjoyment as a fan. I was looking forward to the product improving over time. Nothing like this is available as far as i am aware at any other motorsport event (or any sporting event for that matter) in Australia.
This is a massive backward step. Like taking candy away from a baby……..not happy.
What are you doing about this Bernie???
It is Bernie that is doing it!
It seems most people are following school of thinking that smartphones could offer the service with an ap (assuming the surrounding network can be put in place)
Taking this one step further, Joe, do you know when the LG contract expires? It is possible a new technical partner (Samsung perhaps) may offer fans a new experience, buy a tablet on race weekend (or bring your approved tablet to the weekend) and watch the race with it. Retail points could double as charging points.
Whilst the Fanvision concept was great, the hardware (improved the past couple of years) was a little basic, and not comparable to technology on the market today, bringing an FMCG partner to the table at this point could be a very shrewd move by FOM. Building on your post earlier in the week Joe, hopefully Fanvision’s departure will / has spawned fresh thinking as to how to engage with fans at the track. (if it hasn’t, you have the contacts! Tell them what we want!)
I believe that LG is gone already. In any case bandwidth is a disaster at most F1 tracks. Even mobiles don’t always work.
‘Even mobiles don’t always work.’ Doesn’t that sum up much of FOM’s technology ? You’re lucky if you can get a mobile to work ! Crazy.
Not to defend FOM but the issue of mobile coverage is third party mobile carriers turning up for the weekend with a load of COWs. The carriers know the race is on as they would have statistics of usage from the local cell towers from previous race weekends. They just choose not to.
This is really bad news. Does Bernie want anybody to actually watch the races? First the BBC screw everyone over, now you won’t have a clue whats happening on the track if you are brave enough to stump up the cash for a ticket in the first place.
We used a kanagroo tv at the Belgium GP a year back and it was brilliant, we would have been clueless without it as the PA system was diabolical and the big screens were all too badly positioned for many people to see effectively.
Well that’s pretty terrible. I’ve been to a few races over the recent years and always have a Kangaroo TV/Fanvision. I end up telling those around me what’s happened, mainly from getting the commentary in my ears. Being able to see an accident or overtake that’s happened on the other side of the circuit was invaluable. I can’t really imagine having much clue what’s going on in the race without it, when a car just doesn’t turn up on the next lap round – have they pitted? Have the crashed? Technical failure?
Bad news, this one.
For many years now, fans attending international cricket games in England can buy a little earpiece for £5 or £10 (can’t remember) which allows them to choose between the Sky TV commentary, and the radio Test Match Special commentary, both of which are rebroadcast from within the ground (this detail I know due to the service dropping out when a power cut hit half the ground at Edgbaston last year, but my radio-app on my phone proved that TMS was still going).
Has F1 not even caught up with that yet?!
This is such a huge shame. Live timing and decent commentary (including all of Sky’s F1 and GP2/GP3 commentary teams) made this an even more essential tool at Grands Prix last year.
If it really is just down to greediness (when is it ever not with some people?), then I feel those fans or personnel at the circuits that depend on these devices are the big losers here. Surely those involved could just stop the financial chest-bumping and make this happen. The amount of these I have seen in people’s hands at races (each paying somewhere around £60) must mean that there’s money to be made for someone somewhere in all of this.
I’ve just put in excess of £1000 on my credit card to cover costs for a Silverstone F1 trip this year (as an aside, I noticed that parking has increased from £15 in 2007 to £60 in 2013 – thank you very much insane hosting fees). I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in thinking that I might have reconsidered going had I known there would be no FanVision. As a huge fan of F1 and both GP2 and GP3 I can see a lot of grandstand confusion come those three days at the end of June.
I honestly feel the race is more enjoyable on the TV, at least the Korean GP. They didn’t have all of the big screens they showed on the circuit map (big shocker, huh?), so where we sat we couldn’t tell what was going on until I found a live F1 app for my smartphone during the race.
Without Fanvision, I wouldn’t spend 1,000£…
Quite apart from anything else, some of the F1 pit-lane reporters use stuff gleaned from it to feed extra info back to the commentary box! So it will actually hit the quality of the mainstream TV coverage as well.
Stupid, stupid, stupid move.
This is true.
Bah this is really disappointing – I’ve been looking into going to Spa this year for my first non armchair GP and I’m a little worried now that i’m not going to know what’s going on. If there’s no replacement, should I not bother ?
We’re going to Spa again this year and this news has disappointed us, but ultimately we won’t let it ruin the trip. Spa is a truly epic venue and you’ll still get enjoyment from the fantastic views. Time to investigate alternative means of viewing/listening devices though!
If you don’t have any sort of electronic communication or a big TV, do what we used to do – keep a lap chart. Joe posted on that extensively some time back. By halfway through the race you will be the most popular person around. You just can’t go to the loo.
Although the lack of readable numbers on the cars make it massively difficult these days.
That’s a good shout! – I may give it a try 😉
Score another one for Bernie and his endless greed. Screw the fans!!
Note that infrastructure at football stadia is not usually good enough to manage Internet Radio: http://james.cridland.net/blog/internet-radio-on-your-mobile-phone-at-the-football-does-it-work/
I used Kangaroo TV at Monza back in 2009 and was really excited about using Fanvision there this year. I didn’t find the prices to be prohibitive for Kangaroo TV and the service, both of booking online and dealing with the company at the track, was absolutely excellent. Just as well I got some decent grandstand tickets near to a big screen this year.
This is a huge blow for fans who want to go to a GP but can’t afford the expensive seats/paddock club. Let’s hope FOM can come up with a suitable alternative.
I know purists will inevitably scream “whatever did they do in the old days?” but things really have moved on in other sports and it seemed like F1 was following suit. Apparently not so.
For me, one of the biggest benefits of the Fanvision system was access to the commentary from the excellent BBC/Sky.
F1 what the hell are you doing? Do you want fans or not? … FanVision had become as must have for me trackside, and being a huge fan I wanted to really follow the action not just watch cars fly past – fanvision was perfect.
Was planning on doing 1 or 2 international races this season, but I think ill just stay and watch it on the TV … Not only is FOM killing circuits with its high fees which we end up paying for with expensive tickets, but when something like fanvision comes along to really make the fan apart of the event they screw it up!
Reason to watch the Singapore GP from my hotel room so I can use the F1 app via WIFI rather than sitting in the stands and not knowing what is going on.
I think you might miss out on the atmosphere…
I went to the Hungarian GP this year, and picked up a pre-pay T-Mobile Data SIM for around £20 and then streamed the Sky coverage over the internet from my Sky box at home in the UK using a SlingBox. It worked fantastically well, and I will be doing the same (or at least attempting to) for my next GP trip. The key thing is the availability of a) phone signal, and b) about 3GB of data at a reasonable price.