Posts tagged F1
You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are - E. Albee
TV: Apple cash mountain vs the rest
What will Apple do with its cash mountain? Whenever I ask myself who is more likely to make a success of the next generation television, I imagine which brand would do better if competing for some of the big global content rights packages, like English football or Formula 1. Facebook may have the connected user numbers to make a global TV play credible, but it is the maker of the iPhone and iPad which has the readies for the job. The creator of the iPhone may soon have more ready cash than the US government and analysts are speculating about acquisitions. But the firm may be more focused on a daring foray into pay television [ The Guardian ]
“F*** F1. Save BBC4."
The columnist who tweeted this rude retort to an angry fan the other day sometimes gets it spectacularly and effortlessly right. @CharltonBrooker can be hilariously fearless on some issues and on this I happen to agree with him wholeheartedly. Unlike him, I happen to like F1 fine, but I would still rather spend the BBC funds on Swedish crime drama any day.
Because I just don’t think F1 needs the money and I blame bad mediation. Anyone who can’t measure and monetize that many F’s (fans, followers or friends, you pick the word) more creatively must surely be doing something very wrong or is too rich already to be looking for efficiencies.
To my view, if F1 was owned by the manufacturers they would realise soon enough that they could afford to give the coverage away free to the billions who want to watch. Perhaps in exchange the auto bosses might ask for as little as a Facebook “like” or some other virtual data exchange. Hardly a big ask for an F1 enthusiast.
As it is I am not convinced the teams make all that much moolah from the sport anyhow: what the TV rights fund, only the good lord knows. When the BBC changed tack earlier in the year, presenter and former racer Martin Brundle was asked this question directly. For an articulate guy with plenty of experience both in the sport and the business of the sport, his reply was not worthy of a Newsround presenter: “It’s an expensive sport,” he said. Dugh?!
What do the sport’s sponsors get in exchange for their vast investments? Little more than the mere promise of billions of telly-watching eyeballs from the sport’s ever gracious powers that be. Yet judging by their angry reaction to the loss of BBC-only coverage in this part of the world, those who own the eyeballs appear to be willing to pluck theirs out and hand them over in perpetuity if only they could be guaranteed their regular fix of entertainment “free of point of delivery”. In the UK even Lib Dem MPs are have been raised from their slumber in defence of these endangered eyeballs.
So how long before the sport gets its act together and sorts out the mediation? Quién Sabe? Perhaps the sport would underperform when tested with an uncompromising online audit. And if the numbers did not match the statistical predictions of traditional media it would suggest those global viewing figures have been inflated all along. [ Charlie Brooker writes for The Guardian ]
* “Axing BBC4 would be like taking the world’s cleverest tiger & shooting it in the face. The petition deadline is today” http://t.co/syhptcn — RT @charltonbrooker: RT @caitlinmoran: RT @Marcotti: http://tmi.me/fEe7s
* Will there still be auto racing when the juice runs out? Chances are that at some point in the future much of the sport will be strictly virtual. Here is today’s inevitably clunky precursor [ Gran Turismo.com ]
TV sport: Bud & FB hint at the future
News is that Budweiser is set to broadcast an FA Cup match on its Facebook page soon. The social network appears set to offer an unprecedented opportunity to deliver unique 1:1 content to individual brand loyals without any distracting DRM issues affecting either the brand or the content owner. What chance more brands will want their content delivered this way in the future?
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Some time ago I posted about what I considered was the untapped relationship-marketing potential of Formula 1, steeped as it continued to be in the world of free-to-air television and its somewhat retro business model.
A big blow to those cobwebs came with the decision that Sky should pick up the slack left in the British broadcasting market by an impoverished BBC. It will be BSkyB and their SkyGo network who will be track-side next year for most English-speaking viewers around the world (in the UK and all those countries which used to take the BBC feed).
But more recently comes an experiment which goes closer to the heart of what is a possible way forward for all those sponsors whose tens and hundreds of millions in investment dollars ensure those little jet-like vehicles continue to go round and round Mr Ecclestone’s tarmac mulberry bushes as regularly and as quickly as they do.
Thanks to a new sponsorship agreement with the Football Association, Budweiser is set to pioneer a unique content offer to its Facebook followers. The match between Ascot United and Wembley FC will be first live football game to be streamed on this most social of networking sites.
It is a harbinger of what every high-spending sports media partner is likely to want to deliver to its own loyal customers and brand followers in the future.
This week brought a clutch of new stories quoting Formula 1’s powers-that-be (or should that be singular) rubbishing the notion that the “sport” could survive behind a Murdoch paywall.
We have not been presented with any details of what an alternative rights regime might look like but there appears no pressing reason to believe that any new media owner would immediately capsize the sport’s existing relationships, so the issue seems irrelevant. But describing a potential buyout as “suicide” for the sport is simply daft.
As I write, News International is reportedly rethinking their plans for a paywall for the website of their powerful tabloid, The Sun. This has made headlines because it appears to contradict Rupert Murdoch’s very public and personal investment in his corporation’s paywall strategy. It would be surprising, therefore, if it were to turn out that News International were prepared to be more dogmatic about F1, a toy which already works so well.
The “Paywall Doctrine”
Yet the view which has dominated our media has been the Paywall Doctrine — a notion that sports fans should be concerned because any takeover by a media company will likely signal the end of free access for fans.
It is just the sort of distracted stenography to be expected from a gallery of sporting scribes who must live on in the pitlane regardless. But it would be helpful if we could be provided also with at least some substantive and informed comment examining dispassionately all the factors at play.
It was that old misanthrope Robert Lipsyte who wrote [ SportsWorld, 1975 ] that sports writing can be a “dangerous and grotesque web of ethics and attitudes, an amorphous infrastructure that acts to contain our energies, divert our passions, and socialize us for work or war or depression” … It is a “pacifier, safety valve … a concentration camp for adolescents and an emotional Disneyland for their parents … a buffer, a DMZ, between people and the economic and political systems that direct their lives”.
F1: Sport, business & virtual fantasy
WHO WILL FINALLY MINE FORMULA ONE’S DATA ELDORADO?
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Is it possible that billionaire Bernie Ecclestone, the man whose drive & nous has taken Formula 1 to the top of the global sports business table, simply does not dream “big enough” any more? Somebody out there thinks so. James Murdoch (News International) and John Elkann (Fiat SpA), for example, reckon the business would do better in their hands. They want to buy it from him.
And that, folks, is an extraordinarily big idea. Firstly, because there is nothing ordinary about Formula 1 and secondly, because such a project would likely involve a fusion of business, technology and media such as has never been conceived. I happen to think that those who limit their concerns to the likely management of free-to-air TV rights are not seeing the half of it.
Does F1 need better graphics?
The changing style of racing, complete with mad-cap over-takings and an endless stream of pit stops means that the presenters and the producers of Formula 1 as well as the TV watching public are being challenged to … “KEEP UP”.
As the action on screen becomes more intense and varied so the data points being presented have become more layered and complex. This increases the pressure on the viewer who wants to stay on top of the data flow and “feel” informed. Is that an enjoyable experience? I am not so sure yet.
But if you got up at the crack of dawn (well it always feels that way on a Sunday) last weekend and tried to stay the pace with the firecracker display from Malaysia you will know now that watching Formula 1 today is become a participation sport in its own right. And that counts double if you are trying to keep up with the restless Mr Kobayashi (and I mean Kamui, the driver, not Takeru, the competitive eater).
I would love to get to know who is behind the development of our new Formula 1 on-screen language. Who are the info-graphic designers and how did they stress-test their handiwork before introducing it to the rest of the world?
One thing is certain: if the powers that be keep on tinkering with the sport they will need to ensure that just like the thoroughbred machines on the track, the viewers too, get their data in a manner they can process easily.
* Read what the experts and the fans really think of the “new” F1 in the best racing blog: JamesAllenonF1
* Photo: Darren Heath [ China, 2010 ]
