This is an open letter to Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, and Barbara Slater, head of Sport at the corporation.
Dear Barbara and Mark
I am writing to express my disappointment and concern regarding the newly-announced rights package for Formula One.
The deal thrashed out between BBC, Sky TV and F1 leaves millions of people in the lurch and contributes to problems endemic in British sport and media. It also shows a shocking lack of strategic thinking at best, internal sabotage at worst, and a lack of faith in the product BBC Sport has delivered since 2009.
I have been watching F1 since 1984, with most races live. All have been on free-to-air TV across BBC and ITV. Between three and nine million people watch every race and it significantly out-performs its timeslots most of the time.
The BBC coverage for the past few years has been superb, and production values have been high. A large proportion of the English-speaking world also gets this coverage. The BBC should be justifiably proud of the excellence of this production.
However, recently noises have been coming from inside the BBC that the cost is too much and that coverage could even be dropped wholesale. This 'strategy' has surely undermined the corporation's bargaining position, as no-one could trust a broadcaster hesitating over its commitment. It would not surprise me if the anti-F1 lobby within the BBC intentionally sought to undermine its position by leaking such sentiments.
F1 and their sponsors have long determined that free-to-air TV is their preferred medium, so to allow Sky the opportunity to get their hands on another sport that was once the preserve of free-to-air is shocking. The argument, of course, is that it is time to make cuts. No doubt some cuts could be made, not least in production by dovetailing the (excellent) 5Live and BBC TV teams, or even by remaining in a London studio for two or three of the highest-cost races a year.
Given that BBC supplies the coverage to English-speaking territories internationally I would imagine that offsets a proportion of the cost.
And forgive me, but cutting something to hand it to a company embroiled in the biggest media scandal and ownership saga of recent times smacks of incompetence. At a time when even the Conservative government is moving away from its friends at NewsCorp it is an even bigger surprise.
I will probably end up getting Sky Sports because of this, and that pains me. I don't want to give Murdoch any more money, but us F1 fans are an odd bunch. I can't simply stop watching the races because they're moving to a satellite broadcaster. Sky are rubbing their hands at the prospect of another couple of million subscribers, while the BBC - again - ends up looking foolish as it loses another blue chip sport. And it will lose it eventually. At some point there will enough F1 fans subscribing to Sky Sports that no-one will need the BBC. Not the teams, the sponsors and not the fans; and that will be another sad day for the corporation.
Yours,
James McLaren
