Formula One’s global television audience for its 2013 season dropped by 50 million to 450 million viewers due to changes in broadcast partners in the Chinese and French markets, along with the dominant campaign of Red Bull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel, according to the motor-racing championship’s annual global media report.
F1’s switch from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV to a consortium of 13 regional partners saw the number of people who watched at least 15 non-consecutive minutes of the sport drop by 29.8 million viewers year-on-year.
The report said the move was made to ensure live coverage of every race and qualifying session is provided live in China and an improvement in audience figures is expected in the coming seasons.
Pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus succeeded commercial broadcaster TF1 as France’s F1 rights-holder under a three-year deal commencing in 2013. However, the report said the move led to viewing figures falling from 16 million to 10.2 million in the first year of the agreement.
The 2013 season saw Vettel wrap up his fourth consecutive drivers’ title with three races to spare. The audience report indicated that this seemed to have an impact on figures in two of the sport’s key markets.
In Vettel’s homeland of Germany audiences fell by 8.7 per cent to 31.3 million, while in Brazil, F1’s single biggest market, these figures reduced to 77.2 million from 85.6 million.