Formula One’s French Grand Prix had a record audience on British free-to-air station Channel 4 last month despite widespread criticism that the race was processional.
The Grand Prix, which takes place on the Paul Ricard circuit on the French Riviera, was won by reigning champion Lewis Hamilton who cemented his lead in the standings. Hamilton won in commanding style and finished 18 seconds ahead of his team mate Valtteri Bottas in second place.
Criticism was fueled by the fact that the top four finished the race in the same position they started in and there was only one retirement. It drove Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner to describe the race as being “one of the most boring I can remember being involved in.” Even the drivers couldn’t deny it.
Racing Point driver Sergio Perez admitted that “you do have some races that are incredibly boring at the top of the field” whilst Hamilton added “if you say it’s boring, I totally understand it. Don’t point the finger at the drivers – we don’t write the rules.”
It was one of the worst advertisements for F1 so the greater its exposure, the more it could dent interest in the series. Bearing this in mind, it would be understandable if F1’s owner Liberty Media wished that fans had avoided the French Grand Prix but not only did they tune in, they did it in their droves.
According to the latest data from Britain’s Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), the French Grand Prix is the first race so far this year which had more TV viewers than in 2018. Delayed highlights were broadcast free-to-air on Channel 4 and the audience for them accelerated 19.4% to 1,707,400 making it the fourth most-watched race of the season after Monaco, Spain and Azerbaijan.
A further 8,167 viewers streamed the broadcast on PC/laptop whilst 2,252 used a tablet and 4,218 watched on a smartphone giving a total audience of 1,722,038. Despite the boost, it still even trails behind the audience of the Grand National horse race and the Snooker World Championships. The former attracted 5.6 million TV viewers in Britain this year whilst 2.1 million watched the latter.
The French Grand Prix was also broadcast live in full by Pay TV operator Sky Sports but the data for its F1 channel is missing from BARB’s records so it isn’t possible to say whether its tally also rose. F1 began a new contract with Sky this year and this has led to Channel 4’s audience reversing.
Sky has broadcast all of the races live in full since 2012 but for the past three years around half of them were also shown live on Channel 4 with the remainder covered by delayed highlights. F1 switched gears this year when it began a new contract which gives Sky the rights to broadcast exclusively every race live except for next week’s British Grand Prix. That will also be live on Channel 4 but it only shows delayed highlights of all of the other races.
Ironically, as we reported, in December F1’s global research director Matt Roberts claimed that the audience in Britain would actually accelerate this year because the highlights are being shown by Channel 4 in later slot whereas the live races were on in the early afternoon last year.
“Channel 4 will have the highlights next year and we have worked with them to ensure they show the races in a favourable prime time slot,” he said. “We estimate that we will actually have more viewers next year in the UK (thanks to this prime time slot) than we had this year.” So far only one race has followed his forecast which is particularly concerning as Britain is F1’s heartland. Not only was it home to the first race of the championship in 1950 but seven of the ten teams are located there along with F1 itself.
There is no doubt about the data as BARB’s figures are the official estimate which British networks use to sell advertising spots. Reflecting this, F1’s commercial boss Sean Bratches recently admitted to Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper that “from a reach standpoint it is sub-optimal.”
Pay TV broadcasters can often afford to outbid free to air stations because they are flush with subscription fees and use them to buy content which tempts new customers. It explains why Sky’s broadcast fees in Britain are believed to have doubled under its new agreement as it is paying F1 an estimated $150 million annually. It comes at the expense of exposure as Pay TV networks tend to have far smaller audiences than their free-to-air counterparts because viewers are charged for watching them.
Accordingly, over the past 11 years F1’s worldwide TV audience has crashed 18.3% to 490 million viewers driven by a move from free-to-air to Pay TV networks. After the French Grand Prix that trend may well be on track to continue.
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