Sean Bratches, Formula One’s managing director of commercial operations, has hit out at the motor racing series’ broadcast rights model inherited by the previous regime led by Bernie Ecclestone, stating that a focus on pay-television, especially in the UK market, has been detrimental to the sport.
In March 2016, pay-television broadcaster Sky struck a deal to become the exclusive rights-holder in the UK and Ireland for Formula One from 2019. The deal will run for six years, through to 2024.
Sky will show exclusive live coverage of every grand prix. The British Grand Prix and highlights of all other races and qualifying sessions will be shown by Sky on a free-to-air basis.
Sky already shows live coverage of every race, but commercial broadcaster Channel 4 started a three-year deal last season to show coverage of 10 races per year. Channel 4 picked up the rights after public-service broadcaster the BBC gave up its rights earlier than planned due to budget cuts.
“Free to air is critically important to us,” Bratches said of the approach of F1’s new owners to broadcast rights. “My vision as it relates to media rights is a hybrid of free to air and pay. Our plan is to balance the two but have a prominent, over the year, free-to-air voice. That is important from a fans, sponsors and relevance standpoint. There is the cauldron full of cash on the pay side and on the other side of the scale you have brand and reach.
“My view is a 30-70 model of free-to-air to pay, where you have a number of grands prix to be on free to air and then we can play and toil with the pay side to generate revenue that we can reinvest back into the sport.”
Bratches acknowledged that free-to-air coverage is important in terms of securing future F1 fans when they are young, and said this would be key when devising future rights deals.
“Central to the thesis of our management of this extraordinary property is to serve the F1 fan and we are going to do that with rigour,” he added, according to UK newspaper The Guardian.