F1 2020 on NowTV. What do we want?

[Anonymous User]

was a reply to to the previous poster (the same one you responded to, just took me a bit longer) 😉 

[starman73]

The point is you don't get individual subscriptions to individual sports. F1 is just another "sport". Why should it have a separate pass? And if it does why not Golf, Cricket, Fighting, Ping Pong, Netball etc.  How many passes would you have? 

I think F1 gets a good deal. A 24/7 channel and you can watch a few of the races on Sky One. You can even get the £50 3 month sports passes from Currys when they are on sale.

Far better value than paying £10 for a single GAA game.  I would gladly pay £150 a season to watch GAA on a 24/7 channel. In fact I pay 70 euro for GAAGO, expect for the Sky exclusive games.

The idea of separate passes for separate sports won't necessarily mean savings. Sky do it and it's about £5/month less than getting all the channels. (£23 vs. £18) though you have to have 18 month contract for all sports.

[starman73]

The crux of the matter is this.  Without the millions of football subscribers the whole business model for Sky does not work.  F1 tried PPV and what happened...

Take-up for the service, charged at £12 per race, was low with as little as 9,000 viewers subscribing to see some races. To increase the flagging take-up, F1 Digital+ ran a promotion where one could get the final six races of the season for only £50 compared with paying £72.  The service was never financially viable and was terminated at the end of the 2002 season 

Six races for £50!  Now you get 22 for less than £200 and a 24/7 channel.  

You want a standalone F1 channel, but would you if it cost more?

[starman73]

 if there was the option of 9 months of just Sky premier League for £100 - that wouldn't be a better option for you?

It would be a better option, but it's not going to happen.  Also I have to get Amazon and BT Sport for football as well.

I don't know if there are any numbers on Sky Sports subscribers across all platforms, but for the sake of argument let's say it is 5 million.  I guesstimate the vast majority subscribe primarily for football.  If the football was removed I guess well over 4 million would cancel.  If F1 was removed, i doubt it would be as many as 100,000.    

IMHO, if all you like is F1 then its great to have a 24/7 channel and all the races in one place.

Follow GAA and you need a couple of subscriptions.  Follow football and it can be 3 or 4.

If I could get all the football for £200/annum I would be delighted.

[Anonymous User]

@starman73 Don't get me wrong, I'm not disagreeing with the analysis of the business model etc.... but I think there will come a point where folks who have a 'niche' interest in sports (i.e. the F1) just don't see it worth while subscribing to everything just to get the F1. At the end of it all, I will watch perhaps 6-8 hours of the channel 20(ish) times per year. I know the channel is there 24/7, but 90%+ is repeats and mostly filler. I think if you're following the football, you're getting 00's if not 000's of hours of interest for your money. If you're a 'sports fan' in general, then without a doubt it is a bargain.

I don't know if NowTV release the subscriber numbers, but I'll bet there was a massive drop in F1 passes in 2019 as opposed to 2018, and I'd wager there will be another drop if a similar price increase comes along. 

I don't imagine there will be an F1 channel only pass - if that was so important then there's always Sky and the single channel subscription @£18 but on a contract, which works out at £162 for the 9 months (but you have to sign up for 18 months I think? And have a dish installed. And a box. And hope it doesn't rain too hard).

All things considered, I don't expect to be thrilled with the offer, but at the same time, Sky have to consider if it's worth getting some money out of more potential F1 subscribers for some access vs getting more money out of less people for all the access - I don't know where that tipping point would be though? After all, you can get a VPN for pennies per month, and there's still plenty of FTA channels - or even subscribing to F1TV as options. Or, just watch Channel 4 in the evening for nowt

[doppelganger]

Nice to see lots of debate on the thread.

Here's what Sky are blocking from us in the UK - now available on Roku

(a NowTV box is basically a restricted Roku)

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.f1-tv-now-available-on-the-roku-platform-in-the-usa.4ph7i...

F1TV has had it's teething problems apparently since launch, but it's priced sensibly and the idea is right.

[starman73]

@starman73 Don't get me wrong, I'm not disagreeing with the analysis of the business model etc.... but I think there will come a point where folks who have a 'niche' interest in sports (i.e. the F1) just don't see it worth while subscribing to everything just to get the F1. At the end of it all, I will watch perhaps 6-8 hours of the channel 20(ish) times per year. I know the channel is there 24/7, but 90%+ is repeats and mostly filler. I think if you're following the football, you're getting 00's if not 000's of hours of interest for your money. If you're a 'sports fan' in general, then without a doubt it is a bargain.

Understood. My niche interest is GAA and I pay 70 euro/annum for GAAGO, but because I am in the UK have to get Sky Sports during the summer for the latter stages. I am interested in football, but I only follow 3 clubs, and only 2 of them appear on TV now Orient are in the League and not getting plenty of coverage on BT Sport as they did in the last couple of season.  So whilst there are 100s of hours of football (but no England internationals nor FA Cup nor UEFA games), I generally just get day/week passes as and when necessary.   And trust me, most of the football channels are mostly filler as well.

I do watch other sports, but by and large they are not on Sky, namely Tennis and Rugby Union.  I did watch the Cricket World Cup & Ashes, but on the whole there aren't many sports I care for on Sky. 

So I do understand, but I don't see the case for just F1 unless the same is done for all other sports or at least Cricket & Golf which have their own channels. And then how complex would the passes be ?  Day passes for F1, 4 day passes for Golf, 5 day passes for Cricket...

[starman73]

Here's what Sky are blocking from us in the UK - now available on Roku

What the sports rights sellers give all sports fans in the UK is less for more.  When I went to France 2 or 3 years for a fortnight away I signed up for SFR.  This gave me access to ALL 380 premier league games for just 10 euro/month.  So one subscription for less than a third of the price of NOW TV with FULL re-runs on demand.  I did not have to get two other subscriptions, and even then I only get on demand for just 20 games thanks to Amazon.  For the other 360, only half are shown in their entirety, the rest condensed into 24 minutes of highlights.  And even these are not available on demand to Now TV subscribers.

For many the spitting of sports rights across platforms is a real bugbear.  I wish all I was interested in was F1 cos it would make life a lot simpler.

[starman73]

Because I love all you F1 guys, a tip to get it all for less than £110.

First two or three Grand Prix will be on Sky One, so get a monthly entertainment pass in March. (assuming Vietnam is not postponed, if it is no matter it will be in the second half of the season with China)

Then look out for £50 3 month sports on a stick from Argos, Currys etc.  You can cover all the other Grand Prix with two of these.

And having saved all of you around £80 each, feel free to get me a GAAGO annual pass @ 70 euro 🙂

Sun 15/03/2020	Australian Grand Prix	Melbourne
Sun 22/03/2020	Bahrain Grand Prix	Sakhir
Sun 05/04/2020	Vietnam Grand Prix	Hanoi
	3 month 3 May - 2 Aug
Sun 03/05/2020	Netherlands Grand Prix	Zandvoort
Sun 10/05/2020	Spanish Grand Prix	Barcelona
Sun 24/05/2020	Monaco Grand Prix	Monte Carlo
Sun 07/06/2020	Azerbaijan Grand Prix	Baku
Sun 14/06/2020	Canadian Grand Prix	Montreal
Sun 28/06/2020	French Grand Prix	Le Castellet
Sun 05/07/2020	Austrian Grand Prix	Spielberg
Sun 19/07/2020	British Grand Prix	Silverstone
Sun 02/08/2020	Hungarian Grand Prix	Budapest
	3 month 30 Aug - 29 Sep
Sun 30/08/2020	Belgian Grand Prix	Spa-Francorchamps
Sun 06/09/2020	Italian Grand Prix	Monza
Sun 20/09/2020	Singapore Grand Prix	Marina Bay
Sun 27/09/2020	Russian Grand Prix	Sochi
Sun 11/10/2020	Japanese Grand Prix	Suzuka
Sun 25/10/2020	United States Grand Prix	Austin
Sun 01/11/2020	Mexican Grand Prix	Mexico City
Sun 15/11/2020	Brazilian Grand Prix	Sao Paulo
Sun 29/11/2020	Abu Dhabi Grand Prix	Yas Marina

[Anonymous User]

@starman73  I do understand, but I don't see the case for just F1 unless the same is done for all other sports or at least Cricket & Golf which have their own channels. And then how complex would the passes be ?  Day passes for F1, 4 day passes for Golf, 5 day passes for Cricket...

I suspect this would be the key point / blocking factor.

The argument from Sky I guess would be 'Buy Sky Sports with a single channel' = £18/month - that would be the cheapest way at the moment of getting the F1 channel = £162 for the 9 months - so there's no real incentive to beat that other than perhaps bumping up subscription numbers. Hands are pretty much tied in beating that figure in terms of a 9 month <anything> pass as they can't be seen to be undercutting the 'main offering' 

20-22 day passes at £10 each = £200-220 so really the limit has to be around that £200 mark.

You can wait for special offer/bundles where you can get deals on passes, but some people won't want the faff, this is a trade off for your time vs your money - I think it's worth considering though to get the season for £100ish (Ent passes can be bought for a few quid on ebay)

So, in the interest of making a solution which everyone is happy with what about offering a 'bundle of day passes' e.g. 20 day passes for £100 - I'd consider something like that - or a bundle of weekend passes for a bit more?  Day/week/month already exist - can't be much more hassle to add a 48 hour one? You could then use these on whatever dates for whatever sport you wanted to watch. This way, Sky get money out of me that they otherwise wouldn't, I get to watch what I want & when I want - and I daresay I might use them for things other than the F1 at which point Sky gets more money off me. Once you've committed to a platform, it's much easier to spend more on that platform than look elsewhere.

There will come a point where they have to consider something else - especially if faced with dropping numbers. There will be a tipping point where it's better to get less money from more people rather than more money from less people..but as said before, that's unfortunately out of our hands