[forzaferrari]

Alex Zanardi is to be kept in an induced coma until at least next week after suffering severe head injuries in an accident on his hand cycle.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/53151855

[forzaferrari]

Mark Gallagher: Seeing the RTL-to-Sky shift in Germany I remain convinced that the current #F1 business model does not work. Limiting audiences behind the pay wall kills audience size & the pipeline of new fans. Ironically it makes the sport more unattainable at a time when the opportunity to share content has never been greater. To deny mass market access to your sport is bad for business. The drop in live audiences hampers teams & F1 in securing sponsors. Don’t quote those cumulative viewing figures please. As sponsorship has drifted away from teams it has not migrated to F1/Liberty. As live audience size & sponsorship has diminished, so the reliance on TV rights & promoter fees has increased to the point where most teams are dependent on it. And why races have to be sold wherever the money is on the table.

To see Williams F1 and McLaren F1 (before Covid & setting the McL Group issues aside) losing money & having to sell equity shows how bad things have become. And let us remember that when live audience size was huge & sponsors came in, those sponsors promoted the sport superbly and brought their marketing skills & brand associations to bear. So much of that is gone. To see a United States team like Haas essentially unable to secure major sponsors is a metric worth reflecting upon. The key thing for F1/Liberty is growth & profitability, but by quadrupling live audiences in key markets, or more, sponsorship would come both centrally to F1 as well as teams (reducing dependence on prize fund). Instead of losing 80% of your audience so that 20% pay a subscription, provide the sport to 100% of those who want to watch live races. Limit the free race broadcast to a 10 min lead in & 5 mins post race. Die hard fans wanting premium; practice, qualy, full build up, post race interviews, press conferences & analysis have to subscribe. I believe you’d get your 20% subs, especially if premium subs get ad free coverage while free to air is ad-dependent. Somehow to arrive at a time when free to air has died in key markets, live audiences down, sponsors departed, teams struggling unless paid by F1, is a wrong turn for a sport that continues to have global appeal if not global live audiences of the kind we used to enjoy & somewhat took for granted. There is no doubt that revenue to F1/Liberty would fall, but profitability would increase if top team’s were flush with sponsorship & mid ranking teams generating income more readily, thus not requiring $1bn a year from F1.
I know that the straits being faced by Williams & McLaren have been coming for a while & are not the fault of F1/Liberty, but structurally the business model of the sport does not support teams in a healthy manner. In the post Covid world, with a likely recession bigger than ‘08

Fresh thinking is needed as we head into a decade of profound change. One in which it would be better to see F1 flourish, audiences grow, sponsors return, teams survive, new teams arrive, more media attend, F1 & broadcasters benefit from many more eyeballs on the live show.

[morini]

Fresh thinking is needed as we head into a decade of profound change.

Yep, there are plenty of ways of "monetising" F1 via the internet other than the traditional pay-per-view model. I would agree they need to revisit this if they want to continue to make money.

Myself, I'm used to paying for watching F1 so "it is what it is". Profound change is right though, I'm personally more worried about the long term future of the ICE as we all know which way it that is going both in and out of motorsport (take note of the sneaky way the UK scheist politicians have introduced the high ethanol fuel which a lot of older cars will not be able to run on). Proper cars will be dead within a decade and I don't care what anyone says, motor racing without the sound of a real engine is not the same (for me anyway, others may have differing views on it). Formula E will take over sooner than we all think and at that point I am fairly certain I will stop watching because it doesn't push the right buttons for me. 

In the meantime Liberty need to open it all up in order to reach newer, younger (more tolerant ) fans.

[forzaferrari]

I couldnt agree more, even though I do watch formula e & Moto e.....it just doesnt have the same appeal without the noise. I have always thought putting motorsport behind a paywall was a bad idea (and not just because im a tight git).....the majority of us, er, of a certain age got into this sport because it was readily available on the telly.......nowdays unless a kids parent or the likes are shelling out to watch they just wont get into the sport at an early age like most of us did.

[morini]

nowdays unless a kids parent or the likes are shelling out to watch they just wont get into the sport at an early age like most of us did.

Absolutely! It's a crying shame all these current generation kids will grow up without hearing the bass line of "the chain" and listening to Murray Walker talking entertaining bollocks. Ah, them were the days!

[forzaferrari]

Now long to wait now...1 week(ish)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Never again shall I complain about a race being boring....ok......I wont complain as much

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Amus: F1 is planning a race in Portimao and it is scheduled for the 4th of October.

Imola, on the other hand, appears to be out of the running unless changes can be made to the layout of the pit lane exit.

There is also currently an open discussion about an alternative date for the Canadian GP. It was originally scheduled for the second weekend in June and now the GP could find a place in October.

[forzaferrari]

   

[morini]

Lol!

Is that the thing about Bernie saying black people are more racist than white people?

Time to wheel the old f*cker into the care home I think

[morini]

Wow, crashing hurts. Who'd have thought it?

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/artic...4C21A.html

[forzaferrari]

Motorsport Italy reporting that an official announcement regarding the the F1 race in Mugello (13th of September) could arrive on Monday.

It will be called the Tuscany GP (GP della Toscana)