Hail22 wrote:Despite being a Ferrari fan...I won't watch Formula 1 unless Mclaren, Mercedes and Williams are there call me a "old" or what have you...but Ferrari on its own just isn't the same without the tenacious and hungry teams like Mclaren and the old Silver arrows (Which I still hold hope their flame will soon return).
Apologies Hail22 - what I meant was do you turn up or watch an F1 race to see Bernie, or Ferrari and Mercedes and Red Bull...etc - the cars. It's the cars that people watch. No-one (mass fans) gives a rats who administers a sport or who negotiates the rights. Fans only turn on and turn up to barrack their team.
Bernie has the rights to an empty track. It's only when the cars arrive that the 'show' begins.
SpankHam wrote:The FiA bring a massive HR infrastructure covering all parts of the globe. Marshalls, officials organizing administrators that do all the unseen jobs and tasks necessary to officiate and event. That would not be easy to replace - remember the problems the NFL had with their stand-in officials. The teams have none of this and, IMO, have no interest in creating and administering it.
No, I don't recall the NFL troubles, but I take your word for it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not possible or worthwhile.
The F1 teams don't currently own their own testicles. They have outside (with their own agendas) entities telling them when to show them, when to put them away, when to cough, etc. F1 needs it's own determination and if that means they get together and put in place their own infrastructure, so be it. No one is outsourcing anymore, so why would F1 be any different? The teams can easily afford to do it, once they remove the leeches. There's so much cash floating - they just can't get access to it. Heck, if they run the infrastructure like an F1 team, it'll be a breeze.
On-line streaming is nowhere near a viable option. "Cable" represents a controllable media with a defined high income stream and a mature high standard product....
Australia - Construction underway on 3.5 million premises over three years. It’s the start of a major national infrastructure project that will be rolled out over 10 years.
America - The researcher estimates that overall, North American fiber-optic growth is likely to be 6.4% in 2012, far outpacing cable's 2.2%. But cable still reigns, with a projected North American broadband subscriber base of 55.2 million by the end of this year against 8.1 million for fiber-optic providers. - so cable is king, but fibre is coming fast. Also, companies like Google Fibre are going it alone against the telcos to install the required hardware. It's the future and it's coming quickly.
HD and 3D are viable through the existing media outlets utilized by F1, streaming is popular on forums because it's mostly free - rest assured the teams are not interested in giving their product away.
No-one is suggesting they give it away for free, however the old rules of media are fast becoming redundant - along with thinking "we did it this way before, so it's going be like this forever'. There will always be a mix of free and user pays offerings. Mix this with the new smart devices we have, global roaming and on-demand, you have a power set of tools to generate copious amounts of cash. Plus, new technologies and coding methods have already seen great results to download and stream video content - this will only get better.
I have a big screen tv. Rarely watch it. My local tv offerings are just awful. I can already listen to any radio station online, download just about any movie online, I can watch F1 online, I can watch other sports on my iPhone - the TV, as you want it to be, is dead.
Saying something is too hard, or too big to change is what Bernie and the FIA are relying on. They want F1 Teams to suckle their respective teets for years to come - at a price, of course. It can be done and the sport will be better for it.
which is why we're al the mess we're in....but I think to myself....