Sponsors enter Formula One debate
Sponsors speak up as fans continue to vent against Formula One switching from ONE to TEN.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
While motorsports fans continue to blast TEN over moving Formula One from ONE to TEN, now sponsors are speaking out on the switcheroo.
The Australian reports that Mark Behr, executive manager of marketing for Shannon’s Car Insurance said, “We have already passed on the concerns expressed by some enthusiasts directly to Channel TEN and will continue to review the situation, as we do with any sponsorship.”
Multivitamins company Swisse said it contacted TEN after receiving a call from the newspaper.
“We have been informed that it is only live on the east coast at this stage but that the network is looking at all options,” a spokesperson said.
The switch, which also reverses a promise of HD coverage, triggered a backlash on social media.
As of last night there were 847 signatures on a petition being hosted at BoycottTENSport.com
TEN has reportedly justified the decision as being a commercial move.
Last week a spokesperson simply told TV Tonight, “As of this Sunday, April 22, Formula One will be broadcast on TEN at 9.30pm. This allows all Australians to access the Formula One coverage in a consistent time slot every Sunday night.”
On the weekend Sebastian Vettel held off Kimi Raikkonen to win an incident-free Grand Prix in Bahrain, following anti-government protests that turned violent in the days before the event.
Share
- Tagged with Formula One
25 Responses
Mark Webber just got involved in the situation with a tweet.
From @AussieGrit
Come on @tensporttv @onehd I hear out great Australian motor sport fans are not happy with rescheduling of timings of the GPs. #letsgolive
Craig, thanks for calculating the add break times. The 15% might be less than the usual 33% but with the ‘normal programming’ you’re not missing out on anything during the add breaks. In F1 a lot can happen in 2.5 minutes and you don’t want to watch replays all the time. Live sport should not be interrupted. Imagine the outrage if you had to miss 15 minutes out of a 90 minutes soccer game!
We have received over 1300 Signatures in four days.
Imagine what can be achieved in the three weeks till the next race.
During this weeks race (the actual race not before or after) there were 6 ad breaks, averaging 2.5 minutes each, so that’s 15 minutes for a race lasting 95 minutes, so about 15% misses through ads, which is far less than the 33% of ads during normal programing.
Yes I would love the option of F1 in HD with no ads (during the race) and might even pay for the option but I bet most casual fans wouldn’t and then the reason we’re unlikely to see F1 on Pay TV any time soon. I doubt TEN or the others would pay just to broadcast the AU GP and leave the rest to Foxtel as they know the fan base in this country will dry up… anyone watch the WRC this year?
Thank David for continuing to follow this story. Having read many of the comments here and on other social media sites the silence from Channel 10 is deafening. Hopefully they might see the error of their ways and reinstate the HD coverage and, particularly from my perspective, live coverage into WA. I also note The Australian late last week published a story marked exclusive in relation to this issue – sometime after you David took up the cause. Perhaps an acknowledgment was due in the circumstance!
If ten need to save money they should stop throwing to greg rust whenever the commercials start/end. He has horrible insight and is a waste of air time. Should go straight back to sky.
@Bob Berwick
I have timed the amount of adds. It’s usually around 1/3 of the race. This is standard for normal tv shows but horrible for a non-stop sport.
Given how strongly a lot of people feel about Ten reneging on its earlier promise, it’s somewhat ironic that the movie slated to be shown this Sunday on One when the Moto GP is on, is called “Traitor”.
The bizarre consequence of this is that people all around Australia will be able to watch the Moto 3 and Moto 2 support categories live on One in HD, while the top-level sport will only be live for some and not in HD. The splitting of a single event like that is prob even more irritating to Moto fans but it’s not the first time that Ten has chopped what should have been a single viewing experience into two parts, as Masterchef fans can well remember.
A reminder that comments must comply with Comments Policy including observing guidelines that reference illegal sourcing of content. Thanks.
Like someone said the other day, the bigger issue is the current broadcasting situation where each network’s main channel isn’t in HD, the sooner that can be changed, the better.
I can’t wait for Foxtel to get the F1 rights.
No world class live sport event deserves to be interrupted by far too many and too long commercial breaks.
I haven’t done any timing on it but it feels like we miss at least 20% of the race due to commercials.
Disgusting!
It would be interesting to know what fantastic ratings ONE received by showing an 11 year old movie while the F1 was in progress. TEN = Fools!
It’s just F1 which is delayed. During the current season of ANZ Championship netball, the Sunday afternoon matches on Ten are shown on delay in SA/NT/WA as well.
I think the new anti-siphoning laws, which have been tabled in Federal Parliament, must be tightened, with the provision “use it or lose it” changing to “show it live nationwide or lose it”, forcing free-to-air networks to show the sports they have rights to, live around Australia, via their main channel, the digital channel, and/or live streaming.
Ratings figures would suggest that altho’ there was a moderate increase in the numbers for the race, overall numbers for the night were down for both Ten and One. The higher numbers for the F1 may simply be a reflection of it being on in primetime, given that last week’s China race started at 3pm/4:30/5pm.
So they might have scored a few extra pairs of eyes from people who don’t watch/can’t get the multichannels, and were hanging around after Touch, but they lost a whole stack, most of whom look like they gravitated to The Voice instead of whatever crappy movie was on One.
Looks like the Ten Network are sacrificing One in order to try and improve the numbers for Ten for the headlines. If so, this is a very short-sighted strategy that will come back to bite them.
I wouldn’t be calling 13.1% a super-anything.
I’m a ‘casual’ F1 viewer. Last year i watched about 50% of races (rarely to the end as they finish late). I liked the coverage on One because 1)9.30 was a pretty reasonable time o watch for an hour or so 2) the HD pictures really improved the coverage.
I turned on 10 at 9.30 last night to see a half hour of rubbish talking (im in Adelaide so the race had started) and the on flicking back at about 10.15 the picture quality was rubbish.
I wont watch it on 10 – i just dont care that much to put up with rubbish service. Well done 10; i’ll stick with fox sports HD feed of sports thanks.
Bahrain F1 GP on TEN (Sunday 9:30pm): 425,000 116,000 165,000 45,000 53,000 45,000
Chinese F1 GP on ONE (Last Sunday, live): 349,000 72,000 118,000 78,000 46,000 35,000
Touch on TEN (Sunday 8:30pm): 742,000 210,000 210,000 129,000 77,000 116,000
Avatar on TEN (Last Sunday 8:30pm): 553,000 151,000 148,000 108,000 70,000 77,000
Order of figures: Five City Metro / Sydney / Melbourne / Brisbane / Adelaide / Perth
So it looks like TEN might be better off putting the F1 back on ONE and showing a Sunday night movie after Touch….
The people who would watch Touch, aren’t the same as ones who would watch F1.
The viewership share figures are quite interesting too:
Sunday 15th April – Ten – 18.1%
Sunday 22nd April – Ten – 16.2%
That looks like a massive drop in potential advertising revenue to me.
I’m in Adelaide and was v surprised to find I could watch the live stream on the tensport website last night & so view the race at the time it went to air in the eatern states.
My brother in law in Perth also watched this way.
Of course that’s no substitute for live HD streaming on One, not to mention the advertiers who didn’t reach our eyeballs.
The stream ran one Rexona spot featuring Kimi R and a stack on 11 promos repeated every break.
If last night’s ratings are anything to go by, not a great result. Ten (Ch10, One and Eleven) went from an 18.1% share last Sunday night to a 16.2% share last night.
Formula 1 viewers jumped from 349,000 last Sunday to 425,000 last night but it seems that wasn’t nearly enough to offset the loss of a broad ‘mass appeal’ program on the primary channel (was it Avatar last week?). Suffering from a lack of figures here – does anyone have the detailed ratings for both nights in order to draw a more accurate comparison?
TEN did indeed geoblock their stream.
Lucky there isn’t a whole Internet to get around their useless stream 😉
With Ten’s profit slump they need all the sponsorship dollars they can get and are desperate for ratings too but they’ve just pissed off viewers and sponsors. Good luck with that Ten.
No one talks about their treatment of netball. Sunday night and Monday night games are on like a 4 hour delay. I planned to watch Thunderbirds game which didn’t start until 10.30 on One, 6pm News gave me a score update for the last qtr. Perhaps I was wrong calling for Ten to get NRL. It seems even they can’t do sport right.
Hope something changes with this. Can anyone from Adelaide or Perth confirm that Ten actually blocked you from their live streaming to ?
We’ll see how ‘consistent’ it is in a few weeks when either it doesn’t rate well or Touch doesn’t rate well and the F1 is screened after The Devil Wears Prada.
Like others have said I can live with SD on TEN but for those not on the east coast and now having to wait up to 2 hours for the F1 its a problem. The live timing apps and websites are useless, as is following the social media sites to comment on the race as it airs.
Why can’t TEN show it at 9:30 but still have it live on ONE for all, including those in SA/WA. That way the fans get to see it live and in HD while the casual viewers can turn into TEN after watching their other shows on ‘Super Sunday’.
Has this been bought up this morning on the talk shows, Today and Sunrise? I haven’t seen anything on Morning yet on TEN.
Told you our war would escalate.
Plus TEN have completely destroyed audience loyalty. I don’t think many who used the TEN streams will want to go back to TEN/ONE knowing their contempt for viewers
I thought having F1 on ONE was more of a benefit it will be lucky to do 400k at 930 Sundays which NCIS and Movirs can do!
Having it on ONE gives viewers more choice and increases TENs network share for the night no?!?
Plus is also a good promotional platform for ONE weekly lineup