F1 season pass 2021

[joshyf1]

Will this happen? If so I hope it's not going to cost too much more than £200 as I am on a limited budget as it is

[goggleKev]

Look out for offers on the 25th march! a little birdy has told me there will be an offer of £25pm for 6 months sports pass which they did last year after the F1 pass balls up!!!!!!!

[James_0807]

@Anonymous User

Wow.... okay that is insane. Just checked myself and it seems to be $80 for the year F1 TV Pro in the US if you pay upfront!!! That's £57 right now... for the entire season! That's less than 2 months of sky sports on now tv.

This is completely unacceptable.

Is there any way to access F1 TV pro in the UK? Perhaps a VPN? Almost worth a shot just to check if it works at $10 a month (the monthly price is slightly higher).

[SweetBlitz]

@James_0807 You can get it all with VPN, probably even get it all for nothing.  The price of Sports in UK is outrageous and it's less than you get elsewhere.  When I was in France I got ALL the Premier League games for €9.99/month with full re-runs after the final whistle.  It is £34 rack price in UK and the re-runs take 48 hours to appear and you don't get all the games either as some are on BT, BBC and Amazon.

[James_0807]

@SweetBlitz 

It's actually worse than I originally thought, the F1TV Pro service has just been upgraded to 1080p50 which means the actual comparison is £54 (9*£6 per month) for the F1TV Pro offering, vs £333 (9*£34 per month + 9*£3 per month) for the NowTV/SS offering since we now have to factor Boost into the cost for it to be comparable... How does that make any sense at all??!!

Sky model is surely unsustainable at this point if people start catching on and VPN'ing.

[KartPlayRide]

You'd have thought that NowTV and Sky would have worked out that charging £200 for an annual pass that people will buy, was better for them from a revenue point of view - rather than them not getting any money from people who are unwilling to pay for the full monthly sports pass price, or only day pass purchases.

They're going to make more money off the annual pass surely.

[SweetBlitz]

It's still a fortnight before it starts.  Inevitably there will be a £20/month email offer and a £25/month website offer.   There is zero chance of an annual pass as the last time there was, Now had to refund everyone.

[Kenjara]

The difference though is that this year its very unlikely a single race will get cancelled.

So I wouldn't say that there is zero chance. I am still hoping for a pass myself.

[James_0807]

@KartPlayRide 

My guess would be it's a game of chicken every year. They know if you watched last season etc. so they know if they have managed to dupe people into paying full price or not. If a large enough proportion of known F1 fans have already subscribed then I'd wager likelihood of even an offer is greatly reduced. However, if most known F1 fans aren't subscribed by the week the season starts then they likely don't have much choice but to have some kind of offer. They've paid so much for the rights they need a certain number of subs to even break even.

Exclusivity deals shouldn't be a thing at the end of the day. I refer to my earlier point. It's £6 a month in the US. I know sky sports is more than just f1, but still, it grates knowing how much we're over paying.

[SweetBlitz]

 it grates knowing how much we're over paying.

Compared with what subscriptions cost in most of the EU and elsewhere in the world, the prices in UK and Ireland are exorbitant.  Whenever I am in France or Portugal it costs far less.

All you can do is take up offers to reduce the cost.  I pay £12/month for BT Sport and have a number of Sky Sports vouchers I got with sticks that effectively work out at around £16/month.  And GAAGO for about €60/annum,  At least with Amazon, sport does not cost extra, or as little as 99p/month for Eurosport for the Australian Open tennis.

[Baarty]

The dodgy IPTV services are getting very good these days with picture quality and reliability if you find a good one and they're generally about £10 a month. I prefer to pay for legitimate services nowadays as I can afford it but when I was struggling the pirates did just grand.

The best way to play the now TV game is cancellation. Whenever I cancel I usually get offered a deal to stay, a bit like what happens with Sky. Been on a 19.99 sports deal recently for a number of months. I cancelled that completely as I had some vouchers to use from ages ago. No doubt there will be a deal again soon enough.

Worth noting as well, for a while there have been £25 month passes available at the likes of Curry's. Not sure of it's still a thing today but last year I always got those as a last resort to avoid paying full whack.