F1 heading to Sky?

I'd like Ferrari and Murdoch to take control of F1 and move it to Sky.

Then for all the remaining teams to form a breakaway series and keep it on the BBC. :D

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Originally Posted by Dave B

I'd like Ferrari and Murdoch to take control of F1 and move it to Sky.

Then for all the remaining teams to form a breakaway series and keep it on the BBC. :D

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That would cause a sh!t storm for sure :s hock:

Never good when F1 heads for Sky. Just ask Mark Webber about Valencia last year...

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Originally Posted by Rollo

Potentially if Murdoch wanted to buy all the rights to F1 in Australia he could. I can't find any evidence that prevents the FIA from selling the exclusive rights to Pay TV in any country.

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Apparently the Concorde Agreement, which is between the teams and FOM (which holds the commercial rights to F1) stipulates that FOM can only sell the TV rights in certain countries to free-to-air channels. This is because sponsors of the Teams want their logos in front of as many viewers as possible.

F1 is already on pay tv in many countries, but in most big European countries it's still on free-to-air due to this agreement. I doubt Australia would be included in the list though, it's simply not big enough, so if a News Corp. takeover of F1 was to happen, I'd expect F1 to move over to Foxtel, with the exception of Australian GP which ACMA will make sure will stay on free-to-air for the forseeable future.

Do I have a problem with that? Not really, but I doubt that will make me subscribe to Foxtel. More probably, I'll simply not watch F1 anymore.

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Originally Posted by inimitablestoo

Never good when F1 heads for Sky. Just ask Mark Webber about Valencia last year...

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:laugh:

Man, you guys crack me up!

By complete coincidence, I was flicking through my 2001 Autocourse this morning and this quote from a certain Signor di Montezemolo leapt out at me:

"We will never accept pay-to-view-only television coverage of F1. It is absolutely against the future interest of both Ferrari and F1 as a whole. It is unbelievable. I will never accept it for Ferrari"

Page 35, if you want to see it in full context.

That's true. It's not really up to Bernie. You would hope that the teams and sponsors wouldn't stand for it.

But Sky has free to air channels too.

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Originally Posted by Mark

That's true. It's not really up to Bernie. You would hope that the teams and sponsors wouldn't stand for it.

But Sky has free to air channels too.

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I thought Bernie had pretty much full control over the TV part of things, all stems back to when he realised that TV would be important while none of the teams recognised the possibilities.

Anyway according to Kevin Eason's (Times F1 writer) tweets this morning Bernie has said that move to pay TV would be 'suicidal' and that NewsCorp "hasn't got anything big" to draw in audiences, although as Eason points out don't know where that leaves the Premier League ;)

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Originally Posted by inimitablestoo

By complete coincidence, I was flicking through my 2001 Autocourse this morning and this quote from a certain Signor di Montezemolo leapt out at me:

"We will never accept pay-to-view-only television coverage of F1. It is absolutely against the future interest of both Ferrari and F1 as a whole. It is unbelievable. I will never accept it for Ferrari"

Page 35, if you want to see it in full context.

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Ha! Excellent.

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Originally Posted by barryfullalove

I thought Bernie had pretty much full control over the TV part of things, all stems back to when he realised that TV would be important while none of the teams recognised the possibilities.

Anyway according to Kevin Eason's (Times F1 writer) tweets this morning Bernie has said that move to pay TV would be 'suicidal' and that NewsCorp "hasn't got anything big" to draw in audiences, although as Eason points out don't know where that leaves the Premier League ;)

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Often with relatively small TV audiences in the UK, actually.