Formula One’s switch to a combination of pay-television and free-to-air coverage in Italy from this season has reaped immediate rewards, with a big increase in overall viewing for the season-opening Australian grand prix compared to last season, despite a drop in the live audience.
The decision to switch from free-to-air to exclusive live pay-television coverage in France, however, has resulted in an inevitable collapse in viewer numbers.
In Italy, the live race coverage on Sky Italia at 7am local time drew an audience of 606,000. State broadcaster Rai drew an audience of 4.846 million for delayed coverage at 2pm. This was over 70 per cent up on Rai’s live audience last year of 2.8 million.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, a total of 978,271 viewers watched the race on Sky between the live coverage and full delayed coverage at 10.30am, 2pm and 5.30pm. Almost half of those, 47 per cent, followed the race on more than one channel, making use of the interactive service on Sky’s dedicated Formula One channel.
In France, nearly 420,000 viewers watched the race live on pay-television channel Canal Plus, with 534,000 tuning into the broadcaster’s 6pm extended highlights programme, which was shown in a free-to-air window on the channel. Last year’s race was watched live by 1.5 million on commercial channel TF1.
In the UK, in the second season in which the rights have been shared by public-service broadcaster the BBC and pay-television operator BSkyB, the overall audience for the race was up from 3.338 million to 3.877 million, due to a 19-per-cent increase in the BBC’s audience.
The 2013 UK race audience consisted of 829,000 watching live on the Sky Sports Formula One channel and 3.048 million watching extended highlights coverage on BBC1 at 2pm. Last year, 874,000 watched live on Sky, with 2.464 million tuning into BBC1 later. The live audience in 2011, the last time the race was shown exclusively by the BBC, was 2.661 million.