£60 MILLION
IT'S NOT ENOUGH!
Motor sport on television suffered another setback during the weekend of the French Grand Prix, when ITV crews were barred from showing the Saturday qualifying session.
Since securing the rights to televise F1 races in a sixty million pound, five year deal, ITV have devoted much screen time to the sport: qualifying shown live, Murray and Martin's show on Saturday evening, the race live on Sunday, followed by highlights and a complete rerun later in the week, albeit in the early hours of the morning.
The programme was apparently blacked out because ITV do not have the rights to show qualifying and have refused to pay any more to Mr. Ecclestone.
There is a danger to the sport that F1 may be pricing itself out of the market. Whilst F1s digital TV service is said to be expanding rapidly, only 25% of the U.K. viewing population is covered by non-terrestrial television, ie: satellite or cable and despite recent free offers in the U.K. digital TV. has not taken off as expected.
Motor sport at the highest level and F1 in particular only survives on the vast sums of sponsorship derived from companies largely due to world wide, mass television coverage. If that coverage is restricted and possibly even becomes pay for view, further reducing viewing figures, how many companies may decide that their money would be better spent elsewhere?
This page last updated 24th August 1999