TAG wrote:Not bad news for Haas/sponsorship.
U.S. Bucks Trend With F1 Viewing Even while Formula One’s television audience drops overall, it managed to grow in the U.S. by 10.1% to 12.6 million viewers last year, according to the sport’s recently released annual media report.
The report also showed that the number of viewers in the U.S. who watched between four and nine races last year increased by 128% while those who watched 10 or more doubled. It adds that NBC Sports Network, which carries the series, “recorded year-on-year increases for every single round shown. On average each race shown on NBCSN attracted 85% more viewers this season when compared to 2013.”
The Canadian Grand Prix, which aired on the main NBC station, drew 3.5 million unique viewers, using the industry-standard measurement of anyone who watched at least 15 non-consecutive minutes of the sport.
The U.S. bucked the sport’s wider trend of declining audiences over the past six years. In that time, the global viewership has slipped steadily from 600 million viewers in 2008 to 425 million in 2014.
The major reason is that over the past three years, the sport has migrated from free-to-air broadcasters to pay channels in a slew of countries. Britain led the way in 2012 Sky Sports began broadcasting all F1 races live while its free-to-air national rival, the BBC, shows only half of them.
It shows that the USA's attention to F1 is growing. Which is good news for Bernie, not neccesarily for HAAS.
Remember, HAAS is not using F1 to promote himself more in the states.
HAAS is eyeing european buyers of his CNC equipment. You could say he could care less about F1 ratings in the USA.
There is a bit of a double path to take here, for Gene, though. He's going to advertise with his logo hugely, no doubt.
Now regardless of that, G.Haas would offcourse like more income for his F1 'project' instead of just slamming company money to it. That makes Haas F1 team open for potential sponsors.
Now here comes the crossroads; Haas wants european attention for his equipment. That would mean he'd want to promote his car/team to europe more then anything.
That means european sponsors would have a good influence; promotion of the vehicle and thus Haas exposure on sponsor events. Attention from european companies. News articles of Haas dealing with european companies.
All in the direction he's aiming at.
Now on the other side, we have Haas being essentially an American team. He wants to do it 'the american way'. There will be some American pride there. Now what better to 'fill' that pride with American sponsors? But which ones would it be?
Interestingly, Adam Jacobs is Haas F1's CMO. Adam Jacobs has 'bud' under his 'clientele' so to speak. He could thus opt for slamming Bud [Budweiser] on the Haas cars.
Great for the USA, except there's only 1 race in the states, 1 in canada, and 1 in Mexico.
The rest is in Europe, Asia and sandpit republics. Nobody has interest in Budweiser. I thus don't expect that to be branded on the Haas cars. And for that same issue, i don't think other american companies will be much present on Haas's F1 cars.
I therefor doubt whether Haas will hang on a lot to 'American pride'.
In other words, indeed, i don't really believe Haas will be effected much or interested much in F1 ratings in the USA.
Bernie, however, is a whole different story. Bernie's wet dream is conquering the USA with F1, as there is still a great $$ opportunity in his eyes stateside. I don't think there really is, in reality. But Bernie, he's having vampire dreams of the USA sucking uncle Sam out of Benjamins. Whether that's good news? Well, look at what he did with Turkey, India, Korea for example. Sucked them out of $$, then left them for dead with bite marks in their necks.
There's an opportunity to gain F1 attention stateside. There's also an opportunity to permanently have the USA hate F1 if they get 'screwed over' by Bernie's mad demands. Let's hope that won't happen.
