F1 on the ropes... and I don't even care.

[MadMatt]

That's a bit like CanAm used to be. McLaren dominated, yet more and more people came to see the races! Why? Just because the cars was spectacular. Its been 10 years the cars are boring as well, sound like video games, and driven by robots.

[Richard]

The track is packed full of people, there are so many more grandstands and corporate boxes in this video than there are today. ....Again it illustrates how many people used to cram into Albert Park.

Do you have attendance numbers?

[SidSidney]

1995 - 210,000 Race Day (Adelaide)
2004 – 121,500 Race Day
2006 – 103,000 Race Day
2007 – 105,000 Race Day
2008 – 108,000 Race Day
2010 – 108,500 Race Day
2011 – 111,000 Race Day
2012 – 114,900 Race Day
2013 – 103,000 Race Day
2014 - 105,000 Race Day

Pretty stable, but not the 1990s.

[emaren]

Somewhere in this thread it was mentioned that Bernie figured that TV would make the sport.

He is still in that mindset.

In many countries it is expensive to watch F1 on TV. I lived in the US for ~15 years and tried to continue to watch F1, but requiring premium cable contracts in the last few years I decided that I was not going to spend $140+ a month to watch F1.

Here in the UK at least the races that are not broadcast on the good old BBC are carried by Sky and all it takes is a $15 'Now TV ' box and a £6.99 sports day pass ($12) to watch the race live, with no adverts etc on Sky Sports F1. Which means I can watch the race on my TV, my tablet or my phone (or all three at once)

If Bernie wants to make his next $Quintillion, he needs to embrace live streaming of every aspect of the race weekend behind a paywall. Assuming of course the contracts that he has with the TV companies allow for it.....

F1 on TV is not bad, F1 on TV with a crap-load of adverts is horrible. F1 streamed to your TV, phone, tablet etc is awesome....

If F1 is to survive, it needs to embrace the digital age and relegate TV, just like TV relegated Radio back in the 1970's...

[SidSidney]

At the meeting, AD opened by saying he had heard rumours that a new series was being started, and while he always welcomed healthy competition, he assumed nobody currently competing in the officially sanctioned FIA series was involved in or supporting such an unauthorized breakaway, as it would obviously be a serious breach of trust, as well as being against FIA Sporting Regulations, which could lead to a permanent ban from all forms of motorsport. But if they were any such person in the room, he went on, it would be appropriate for those persons to leave the room before the meeting started, to avoid any unwarranted misrepresentation of interests or potentially fraudulent claiming of prize monies.

And just to show that the money-making power of a monopoly series is still used as a lever, a day later, senior calls for rebel teams to be banned for life:-

Mario Andretti, the United States Grand Prix’s official ambassador, wants rebel teams banned from Formula One for life.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/n ... f1-boycott

So imagine now you are the F1 bosses of those teams, and the boot is now on the other foot - your actions have brought the sport into disrepute, so we are rescinding your F1 entrant's licence. The new F1 is the Premiere League, only the top 6 teams can play with 4 cars each. Good luck in whatever other sport you choose and in selling your team, as without that entry paperwork all you have is some second hand carbon fiber and a lot of bills to pay...

[GitanesBlondes]

Sid, I love Mario as he is one of the true legends of motor racing, and a guy who I worship to this day on some level, but he is out of touch on this. His involvement is minimal, and he is probably relying on Bernie for all of his knowledge of what goes on. His quote about what Frank Williams said about being like Colin Chapman isn't possible in today's F1. He should know better.

[SidSidney]

Sid, I love Mario as he is one of the true legends of motor racing, and a guy who I worship to this day on some level, but he is out of touch on this. His involvement is minimal, and he is probably relying on Bernie for all of his knowledge of what goes on. His quote about what Frank Williams said about being like Colin Chapman isn't possible in today's F1. He should know better.

I think you are exactly right. Mario was probably primed to say that as a stalking horse to knock those teams back a step or two. Mario, Max and Bernie are old chums.

[Ultra]

I think we are being a bit dramatic.

Simple: back in the times radio was the important media for sports.

Ecclestone knew that TV was going to be more important.

It could come as a shock, but nobody, I mean, nobody could imagine that TV could be used to transmit racing.

Nobody could imagine that cars could carry TV cameras.

It was hard enough to fix on them compact film cameras that needed no external power source!
http://cdn05.motorsportretro.com/wp-con ... x-film.jpg

When the trend toward televised sports started, Ecclestone was one of the first that realized the trend and bet on it. He bet all he had, btw.

Nowadays most people, Bernie included, thinks that the money is still on TV.

I disagree. I have no idea how sports are going to be broadcast in the future and nor do you.

That's the source of the problem... besides greed (Ecclestone), fear (teams) and brownnose-ing (Mosley, FIA): we ignore the future, we have no idea of the shape of things to come.

Frankly, to think that all people that fails is evil it's not always correct.

Why would you blame failures on evilness when stupidity suffices? (if you're a Mod you understand that pretty quickly).

C'mon, it's obvious he's quite idiotic, stop droning about how bad Ecclestone is
http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/artic ... 330942.jpg

I say, no more mosquito killing, let's drain the swamp. By that I mean that is the money, stupid.

As people say, money is like sh*t: if you put it all in one place, it stinks. If you spread it around, it's called fertilizer. If CVC continues the stranglehold on cash, they're going to run out of it.

Really good post. I agree completely.

Bernie never coerced anyone. All of the agreements that he was a part of were willingly signed by the teams and the FIA. It is clear to me that stupidity trumps evil in this case.

[donskar]

Where all the money went, the image is just so bizarre, a used bikes peddler with his croatioan trophy-wife?

http://imalbum.aufeminin.com/album/D200 ... 2220_L.jpg

Who's the dwarf with the babes?

[Sombrero]

What the hell is Mario talking about ?

[Ciro Pabón]

... I decided that I was not going to spend $140+ a month to watch F1.

Here in the UK at least the races that are not broadcast on the good old BBC are carried by Sky and all it takes is a $15 'Now TV ' box and a £6.99 sports day pass ($12) to watch the race...

If Bernie wants to make his next $Quintillion, he needs to embrace live streaming...

...

If F1 is to survive, it needs to embrace the digital age and relegate TV, just like TV relegated Radio back in the 1970's...

Well, I'm not that sure what digital age means. Please, follow me for a moment, if you wish.

First, as you clearly understand, the prices you mention are simply not good for Internet, even if we do not take in account JustinTV or PirateBay.

I pay U$25 for a month of cable TV, including F1.

For this price, the number of ads is very small.

Perhaps they stop the race twice, for a couple of minutes, and they do it at 'strategical' moments, when there is not much action (that is, between laps 1 and 52, when you're dozing watching Hamilton running two minutes ahead of Ricciardo).

The problem they have in Colombia to charge more is Netflix and similar alternatives.

Paying $140 dollars or even $12 for one show is out of the question for most Colombians.

I didn't pay 140 dollars for this mule, Mister... and it's faster than a Caterham!


Now, let's be sincere about "digital media".

Streaming is just a way of transmitting TV using the Internet.

I think streaming-as-of-today is not the future. It's a bizarre mixture of new and old: in the end, you're watching TV using the Internet.

... and not a very good TV, if you ask me


It's like using the Internet to ask via e-mail for a VHS cassette to be delivered to your house using UPS. Weird.

That's not the spirit of the Internet.

The Web is the same as The Internet? I don't think so


Things like Roku are a preview of the future, I think. A friend bought one recently. Man, that's neat.

Roku on a stick: better than Chromecast


You have to wonder if once you can broadcast from a Roku device or a Chromecast, why this device cannot be used to feed one building or even a neighborhood?.

It can.

I imagine that hacks following that idea will appear soon if they haven't already.

They will be hard to prohibit, I guess.

During last World Cup (Note for Americans, there is only one World Cup and it's what you call World Soccer Cup) we rigged one PC in the office to the cable box and streamed the signal to all PCs using the LAN and f@cking VLC!

VLC streams over a LAN, for the love of Pete


I realized (later on) that you could do the same trick using Windows Media Player.

Lemme tell you this: productivity took a dive at the Ministry of Transportation in Colombia! We bogged down the LAN, proudly


Simple: if you have a LAN, any kind of LAN, you can stream the signal (any signal) that is in one PC to all the PCs in your LAN. Here the (old) tutorial I just googled (we didn't even need a tutorial during the World Cup).

So, what about this? Instead of using a torrent to view movies you could imagine a "torrent" (?) of Rokus allowing multiples houses to watch the same set of channels.

It's all in the bandwidth.

Thus, perhaps the stranglehold they have in the cable is fuzzier when true WiFi enters the picture.

After all, once you get the signal from the WiFi, down into a cable, it's easier to hack things, I imagine.

This means that channels could be really, really accessible to a majority of the population, creating the "next quintillion" mentioned before.

I think it's all in the ability to distribute not to a country, not to a market segment, but to the World... and the world is not rich.

[GitanesBlondes]

Sid, I love Mario as he is one of the true legends of motor racing, and a guy who I worship to this day on some level, but he is out of touch on this. His involvement is minimal, and he is probably relying on Bernie for all of his knowledge of what goes on. His quote about what Frank Williams said about being like Colin Chapman isn't possible in today's F1. He should know better.

I think you are exactly right. Mario was probably primed to say that as a stalking horse to knock those teams back a step or two. Mario, Max and Bernie are old chums.

The other thing with Mario is that he was the same one who didn't see it as a big deal that his son was going to commute from the US to Europe for every race during the 1993 season instead of moving to England and fully dedicating his time there.

He still thought it was like the 1970s where he could do that without any issue.

As far as modern F1 goes with the logistics and structure, he's been out of touch for over 20 years now on that front.

[SidSidney]

The other thing with Mario is that he was the same one who didn't see it as a big deal that his son was going to commute from the US to Europe for every race during the 1993 season instead of moving to England and fully dedicating his time there.

One of my all-time favorite TV scenes was Senna schooling Michael Andretti at Monza in "A Season With McLaren":-

http://youtu.be/CUIosTAUo9Y?t=12m50s

Andretti just looks like a deer in the headlights at Ayrton's recall and explanation of the asphalt in the chicanes at Monza.

[GitanesBlondes]

Thanks for that link! Great stuff.

While he would have had a difficult time against Senna had he integrated with the team, that's the stuff that did him no favors in the long run. He miscalculated the commitment involved with F1, and thought he could take the CART approach to it. Some of his race problems were not his fault, but it's hard for a team to be supportive when you're never around to interact with them.

[xpensive]

Michael Andretti was/is a Penna peasant, the story about him and wife Sandy ordering burgers in Paris just tells it all.

But on topic, F1 has totally lost the plot, those silly engines was the last straw.