Formula One coverage up in the air

THERE IS uncertainty over whether people on the island will be able to watch live coverage of the opening race of the Formula One Championship this Sunday.
The first race will take place at 8am local time and will be broadcast from Melbourne in Australia but with no TV channels having purchased the rights for the season or even the first race yet, local viewers could be left out in the cold again.
There was a similar scenario last year as local subscriber channel LTV obtained broadcasting rights after the second race of the season, purchasing the rights for the 17 remaining races separately. “The broadcasting rights for races or the whole season can be purchased from Formula One Management (FOM), the company owned by racing magnate Bernie Ecclestone,” LTV sportscaster, editor and producer Frixos Massouras said. “If you purchase the rights to the whole season you get some extras like practice sessions and qualifying,” he said.
Although exact figures were not available, Massouras stated that purchasing the rights for three seasons in a row comes to almost €1 million.
He explained that without advertising, LTV would not be able to purchase the rights and although in the past, people complained about interruptions to coverage of the race, they were becoming more and more understanding of the expensive cost of broadcasting rights. “If you take the case of the World Rally Championship (WRC) you will see that nobody in the UK televised the first race of the season last weekend,” he said. “And in the UK you have multi-million pound companies like Sky who decided against paying for the rights which shows you the state of things,” he added.
There are other means with which people can watch the race this weekend but that would either involve finding an illegal stream of the race from the internet or an illegal satellite-dish set-up. Massouras recommended that people remain patient and try to understand the difficult financial climate which surrounds the country right now. “Formula One Racing is a niche market and with people counting every penny right now we hope that a solution and more advertising can be found,” he added.