Current Where do FOTA's loyalties lie? With the fans, their sponsors, themselves, or Bernie?

[Fenderman]

Wasn't trying to be patronising Fenderman and my apologies if you felt I was. I understand that many might find it difficult to stump up the money to watch Sky Sports but it is what it is. The point I was trying to get across is that big business actually doesn't give a shit about the likes of you and me as long as they make more money. All the crap you see about social inclusion, green standards, equality programmes fall by the way side if they can make a few more quid/dollars/yen/roubles etc, etc.

No problem, FB. Apologies for getting the hump about it - methinks y'all know why I was in a pretty bad mood yesterday!

For the record, I agree entirely with your points above and it's why my work in "community development" quite often sucks.

 

[Brogan]

It would appear the Concorde agreement doesn't cover the BBC/Sky deal so it's all over.

Although it had been widely believed there were clauses in the Concorde Agreement which prevented Ecclestone taking the sport off free-to-air television, it has been revealed that the wording of the deal does not stop him activating the kind of share deal that has been put in place with the BBC and Sky.

High level sources have revealed that the wording of an Appendix in the Concorde Agreement relating to the broadcasting of the sport states: "The Commercial Rights Holder may not permit Formula 1 events to be shown only by pay television in a country with a significant audience if it would materially adversely affect audience reach in that country."

Once again Bernie and his lawyers win.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93507

 

[Fenderman]

Had a feeling there would be the get out phrase. I don't believe in Father Christmas but Sneaky Clause is real..

 

[Brogan]

Well FOTA still have the option of going it alone in 2013 once the current Concorde agreement expires.

It's not going to happen of course, but now is their perfect opportunity - they have a year to hammer out new reg's, contracts, agreements with circuits, etc.

 

[Fenderman]

Indeed. Wouldn't it be great to finally see them flex their muscle and say "We've had enough and just can't take it anymore!" and then break out once and for all?

 

[TN23]

Can I say, TN23, I've read a bit of Marx in my time, and that is very similar.
n
This is from someone who doesn't see "communist" as an accusation, by the way!

I realise I'm getting too serious about this. I almost said to my eight-year-old cousin that wanted to start his own religion that 'Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature...'

I find it very difficult to even say anything that could be considered 'communist', as suddenly you are accused of being a descendant of Stalin- no amount of explaining can justify these statements to a lot of people unfortunately.

 

[Muddytalker]

It would appear the Concorde agreement doesn't cover the BBC/Sky deal so it's all over.

Once again Bernie and his lawyers win.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93507

More to the point, within the same story, this below makes me very sad. Am I so out of touch to disagree with just about everything here?

HRT team boss Colin Kolles said any F1 squads criticising Ecclestone for the move were wrong, because of the huge financial benefits the new deal brings to teams.

"If you would ask my colleagues after the meeting with Bernie Ecclestone, everybody is very happy," Kolles told AUTOSPORT. "Bernie has shown again to his people, who are criticising him, what fantastic deals he has done.
"He has also done fantastic for the fans because it is not only 10 races on BBC live, you also have the other 10 races on at prime time, at 6pm, on BBC - which is even better because I don't believe that someone likes to wake up at 4am to watch an F1 race.
"This will bring much increased viewership and it brings a quite amazing deal to the stakeholders of F1. I think Bernie has shown again what a fantastic job he is doing and this has to be really appreciated."

Particularly the bold bit. If you don't believe it, why not have a look at the viewing figures, since the Far East/Australian races started. Long term, 'real' die-hard F1 fans (i.e. not your sponsors' target audience who I would suggest are, with respect 'laymen/women' and have but a passing interest in the sport) relish the challenges of either staying up/waking up early to catch these races, usually races that are the most exciting of the season. Until recently, it was just Bernie's cash machine, but it's clear that the moneymen are well and truly infiltrated within the sport.

 

[Brogan]

It's a very disingenuous statement anyway, as whenever there is an early race it's repeated on the BBC later in the day in full.

I fully agree though, it seems everyone involved is just thinking of the short term gain and not considering the long term impact of the viewer numbers declining, which will affect sponsorship and therefore much less income form the teams.

Still, what do we know?

 

[Muddytalker]

Going through the entire day - not listening to any news programs, staying away from the web, trying your best not to hear the result, staying away from pubs and shops all day long, only to get home and have someone say - "I hear there was a great race today - Lewis won by ten seconds"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh"

It's just not the same

I've had to do that a few times this season, and somehow manged it for Brazil '08!
Canada this year was a different story though, and because of the BBC changing the channel partway through the race, I managed to miss the 2nd part of the race (was watching the recording whilst it moved to BBC2), and having realised what had happened, flicked over to BBC2 just as Button was celebrating. I doubt Sky would do that (channel change), but, to avoid the news and sports bulletins, not to mention the constant SSN bulletins, and avoid any kind of news website is not an easy task.

 

[Brogan]

You know, the more I think about it, the more angry I am with the teams.

For the sake of a bit more cash in the short term they have sold out the fans.

If any of them go under as a result of this in the long term, I won't shed any tears for them.

 

[Dan Unwin]

Everyone should compain to both BBC and FOTA, at least we can cost them some money in email storage / time in repling to all emails.

Also the clause in the Concord says "F1 events" so a race shown on Sky and not on BBC will be an "event" hopfully people will not be sheep in joining sky and then it will be in breech of the agreement!!

 

[canis]

I have to admit that if I didn't already have Sky Sports then I would be more than a little upset about this.

The problem with relying on the concord agreement to rule over anything is that it is worded in such a wooly way over everything other than money that it is virtually impossible to claim someone has broken the agreement. But, having said that, I was having a conversation with someone in the marketting way of life over the weekend, and they do have a few companies that pay to have their logos on F1 cars as clients. They were working off the very vague information that was available to them on Friday, but they were saying that to any company trying to target the UK market the space on a car or overall was estimated to be worth around 25%-30% of this years value once next season starts. This was based on the potential realistic viewing figures of F1 races on Sky Sports (their subscriber numbers times by the average saturation level to turn it into proposed viewing figures).

When you take the figures from Sky subscribers they would have to get an increase in subscription by approx 7% of current levels and have 100% of the potential audience watching just to reach the current BBC viewing levels (This is including the cable figures from Virgin Media). Unfortunately, not every Sky subscriber has the sports channels, so in reality the estimate (figures from Sky are never really that accurate due to the way you can subscribe one month and not the next, this is based on core figures of long term subscribers) is that Sky Sports would need to double their subscription levels and then manage 100% viewing figures to catch up to where the BBC is this year. So, when you take those figures, plus add in the fact that every person who subscribes to Sky Sports also has BBC available to them, how can this deal ever be sold to anyone as a "way to increase the viewing figures"?

Though having said all of that, I don't think the teams really are taking this lightly, just a sneaky feeling I have after seeing a report over the weekend that was buried under all the other F1 related news, that the teams have told Bernie they are not agreeing with his proposed calander for next year. Please remember that even if the teams don't have a leg to stand on under the Free-to-air clause in the concord agreement, they do have plenty of other ways to make life difficult for Bernie....

 

[cider_and_toast]

Sky/BBC deal 'saved free-to-air' F1Williams chairman Adam Parr believes Bernie Ecclestone did the right thing in putting together that BBC/Sky shared broadcast deal for next year - because there was a risk of Formula 1 coverage being off free-to-air television entirely.

While British fans remain angry about the prospect of not being able to watch every race live on the BBC from 2012, Parr says that those unhappy about the move should actually be happy that Ecclestone has managed to keep at least some races on the channel.

Although sympathetic that fans will feel they are worse off in 2012, Parr says that they must take into consideration that they could have been even worse off if the Sky/BBC share deal had not come together.

"I can understand why a British fan who has had free non-advert coverage, amazing content, and brilliant presenters will be saying that anything else is going to be less good," explained Parr.

"I am sorry that the BBC could not carry on doing what they are doing, but they made that decision. I don't think that the fees being charged to the BBC are unreasonable compared to Wimbledon or any other major sports event.

"I am sympathetic, but to be fair the teams have not had any involvement in this. We don't negotiate these deals, but when Bernie briefed us as a group about this, the universal view was, okay we get it. We understand why you've done it. We see the benefits; we know where you are coming from - fair enough."

Another love note to dear old Bernie, this time by Adam Parr of Williams. (taken from an article by John Noble on the Autosport Website). Apparently the fees that Bernie charges for TV rights are reasonable according to Parr and that all the team principles could see the benefits of the new deal.

 

[Brogan]

Just more proof that FOTA are totally under Bernie's control and care as much about the fans as he does.

 

[RossTheBoss]

The problem is most of FOTA's representatives either don't have a spine or are working for someone else essentially (Parr, Whitmarsh, Horner). I never thought I'd say this but...

Bring back LDM! At least he'd ruffle a few feathers!

 

[Slyboogy]

Bring back LDM! At least he'd ruffle a few feathers!

He would always pull out the classic card

"Breakaway series"

I agree, he was quite good at that, but who knows he might have favoured Sky like the rest