Fox Sports to show lion’s share of F1 coverage in new Australian rights deals

Australian pay-television broadcaster Fox Sports and commercial broadcaster Ten have acquired rights for the Formula One motor-racing championship.

Fox Sports will show live coverage of all 20 races, with Ten broadcasting live coverage of 10 grands prix per season.

Ten will show highlights coverage of the other 10 races on its secondary channel Eleven.

The new deals with Formula One Management will run for five years, from 2015 to 2019.

As part of the agreement, Fox Sports chief executive Patrick Delany said that his company had struck an “extraordinary affiliate agreement” with Sky to show the same Formula One coverage that is available via the UK pay-television broadcaster.

The rights model mirrors that of the UK market, with Sky showing live coverage of all races through a dedicated channel and free-to-air broadcaster the BBC having scaled back its live coverage to half of the schedule’s grands prix per season since 2012.

Although not always live, the complete schedule of Formula One races has been shown on free-to-air television in Australia since the early 1980s.