| By Lawrence Barretto | |
| F1 Reporter |
New Formula 1 chief Chase Carey has said he wants each grand prix to be a Super Bowl. He'd like to see all dates on the F1 calendar become "week-long extravaganzas with entertainment and music, events that capture a whole city". It's a bold target. American football's biggest game of the year is screened in 180 countries in 25 languages. It attracts around 110million viewers in the US, and 140,000 people visited Houston for this year's edition, which took place last Sunday between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons. The most expensive tickets will set you back around £9000. Over 70% of active TV screens in the US are tuned to the broadcast, while a 30-second commercial costs around £3.5m - £116,667 per second. But the Super Bowl remains as much a date in the pop culture calendar as it is a sporting event, which in turn helps generate such impressive viewership. Often the half-time show, which this year featured Lady Gaga, is the most talked about element of the whole event. The figures above are what F1's new owners crave. But is it practical to aim for 20 Super Bowls? The Super Bowl is so popular because it is a one-off. Create 20 of them each year and you dramatically dilute the product. Paying £9000 for a ticket to a special event you know you are only likely to be able to attend once, given demand, is one thing. Doing so when tickets are readily available and the match doesn't mean so much is quite another. Research conducted by European football's governing body UEFA on ticketed events - and not including motor racing events such as F1, NASCAR, IndyCar and MotoGP - found that rugby's Six Nations tournament came out on top in a table of average attendance, beating the NFL (National Football League) into second, with football's World Cup third, the Rugby World Cup fourth and football's European Championship fifth. With a Six Nations match, there are no gimmicks. There's some pre-match entertainment outside the stadium, but apart from that, it's all about 80 minutes of rugby. And yet according to UEFA's figures, matches have an average attendance of 72,000, beating NFL's average of 68,400. Coming back to the original point about the Super Bowl being a one-off, the Six Nations figures are inevitably helped by the fact the tournament features only 15 games each year, and only two or three of those games will be played at home for each country. That's simple supply and demand. Reliable attendance figures for F1 are not as easily available, but as a general trend, there are vast differences between circuits.
While Silverstone attracted an impressive 139,000 on British Grand Prix race day, the German GP at Hockenheim, by contrast, managed just 57,000. It required 60,000 to break even. Promotion, then, is incredibly important - and this is something American sports do tremendously well. For the Super Bowl, there was a week-long build up focused not only on generating interest in Houston and maximising gains for local business as well as the host venue, but also across America and the rest of the world. A structured plan is put in place, with events on-site co-ordinated, campaigns sent out on social media, and sponsors working hand-in-hand with the governing body and teams to promote themselves and in turn the event itself. It sounds so simple. You can attend some grands prix, such as in China, and away from the circuit you won't know there is an F1 race going on. There's nothing at the airport, no billboards along the main roads - and no adverts in magazines, promotional material, TV commercials or F1 personalities on big TV shows. It's ridiculous. Drivers should be going into schools promoting motorsport, convincing the kids to ask their parents to take them to the grand prix. There should be F1 roadshows across the city. Ahead of the British GP, for example, Lewis Hamilton could do a demo along the Mall and then be a guest on stage at a pre-race event in Trafalgar Square.
As the demonstration event in London proved in 2004, the crowds will come. A claimed figure of 500,000 people watched eight F1 cars complete a course between Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus back then. Liberty Media is already making steps in this area. Whereas there was no marketing department under the Bernie Ecclestone regime, F1's new owners plan to create a dedicated team that is expected to be on par with the sizeable department run by the NFL. The TV side of the business is somewhat harder to develop. Competition for people's attention is huge. In the UK not only are there hundreds of channels available on Sky and cable, but the growth of on-demand services such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer have changed the way people watch. So how do you get people to sit down in front of their TV? It's clearly not impossible because 72% of TVs in US households that were in use at the time of the Super Bowl were tuned into the showpiece event. And that does not include the people watching in bars around the country. Part of the event's success is that it inspires people to get together, whether that is at a friend's house, a bar or at a venue hosting a Super Bowl party. When F1's new bosses talk of turning the calendar into 20 Super Bowls, hopefully the goal is to attempt to create a Super Bowl atmosphere in each country, rather than targeting a global Super Bowl-style following that would be difficult to replicate. If fans had more reasons to talk about F1, and there was something for a greater cross-section of people, perhaps that would encourage them to get together to watch a grand prix. Perhaps, ahead of each race, there could be a short set by an A-lister like Taylor Swift.
The other problem is actually watching motorsport. From 2019, all live F1 races will move behind a pay wall, since Sky has exclusive rights. That immediately reduces the number of people who will tune in, a figure that has already diminished following the BBC's pull-out. When the coverage switched to Channel 4 for 2016, the audience was down around 37%. When Channel 4's figures were combined with Sky's, not including on-demand numbers, there was a drop of 29.7% from an average of 3.74million per race to 2.63million. The solution could be to follow the NFL, National Basketball Association (NBA) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) by creating an online subscription service. The latter, for example, charges £9.99 per month for its WWE Network service that gives you access to over 7000 hours of coverage that includes archive footage and live action, headlined by 16 events which were previously only available on pay-per-view. You could argue that will hurt the broadcasting rights fees, since a move to online subscriptions will reduce the attraction of platforms such as Sky's. But WWE structures its programming so it still has two live shows per week that are broadcast exclusively on conventional TV, totalling five hours between them. When it announced in 2014 it was launching its subscription service, it also revealed new global TV deals that brought in around £160million, up from around £87m in the previous rotation. The subscription service is working for WWE. While its numbers peaked at 1.8m active subscribers in April 2016, that included roughly 300,000 people utilising a free 30-day trial for 'Wrestlemania' (its own Super Bowl). Official figures from late in 2016, traditionally a quieter time of year in its schedule, suggested there were around 1.45 million paid users, with a Q4 update due this week. If the TV rights renewal figures are lower than expected in future, the WWE will hope to soften the loss with an increasing income from its subscription service.
Then the financial side of F1 needs to be addressed. A pot of £775million was distributed across the 11 teams in 2016, but the split was far from even. At one end of the scale, Ferrari received around £154million that included special historic payments and covered almost 20% of the total given to teams. At the other end, Manor got just £38million. In contrast, NFL teams equally shared a pot of around £5.7billion in revenues, which includes sponsorships, broadcast deals, licensing and merchandise sales, from the 2016 season, based on data released by the Green Bay Packers. That meant each of the 32 teams received around £179million, which enabled them to remain in business even if they had a bad season. F1 teams being more closely matched in budget terms would surely have a positive impact on the racing and therefore the appeal of the show. And on the subject of finances, something needs to be done regarding the fees circuits pay and the restrictions that come with that deal, such as trackside sponsorship, which is currently controlled by Formula One Management. It isn't right that a venue such as Silverstone can attract 139,000 spectators on race day and is still struggling to hold on to the British GP, since the escalating fee structure that Ecclestone built in to its contract could force the venue to activate its break clause this year.
Post-Super Bowl, Monday morning's headlines were dominated by Lady Gaga's spectacular performance in which she jumped off the roof of Houston's NRG stadium and was illuminated by the light radiating from hundreds of drones. There were 2.2million tweets about the #PepsiHalftime show during the 20-minute live performance, and 5.1million tweets about Gaga during a one-hour period around her performance. But that performance was matched by an epic contest on the pitch as the Patriots produced the greatest comeback in the history of the showpiece event. The now five-time winners beat the Falcons 34-28 in overtime, having trailed by 25 points in the third quarter. The previous record comeback was 10 points, and never before has a Super Bowl gone into overtime. That came after the NFL had suffered an 8% ratings drop during the regular season, which was the first time its viewership had declined in four years. There had also been complaints that the games had been dragged out by lucrative commercial advertisements. That appeared to have little impact on the Super Bowl, which remained as popular as ever. Liberty must be wary that even the biggest sports are facing challenging times attracting audiences outside marquee events, and that the action itself must remain a focus. As FIA president Jean Todt said recently: "For me, Formula 1 is great. The championship we enjoyed last year was a fight until the last corner. It would be the wrong message [to suggest F1 is in need of dramatic change]." Ross Brawn and Sean Bratches have quite a job on their hands to find that balance and the changes will not happen overnight. Let's hope Carey gives them the time to deliver.
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| By Lawrence Barretto | |
| F1 Reporter |
New Formula 1 chief Chase Carey has said he wants each grand prix to be a Super Bowl. He'd like to see all dates on the F1 calendar become "week-long extravaganzas with entertainment and music, events that capture a whole city". It's a bold target. American football's biggest game of the year is screened in 180 countries in 25 languages. It attracts around 110million viewers in the US, and 140,000 people visited Houston for this year's edition, which took place last Sunday between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons. The most expensive tickets will set you back around £9000. Over 70% of active TV screens in the US are tuned to the broadcast, while a 30-second commercial costs around £3.5m - £116,667 per second. But the Super Bowl remains as much a date in the pop culture calendar as it is a sporting event, which in turn helps generate such impressive viewership. Often the half-time show, which this year featured Lady Gaga, is the most talked about element of the whole event. The figures above are what F1's new owners crave. But is it practical to aim for 20 Super Bowls? The Super Bowl is so popular because it is a one-off. Create 20 of them each year and you dramatically dilute the product. Paying £9000 for a ticket to a special event you know you are only likely to be able to attend once, given demand, is one thing. Doing so when tickets are readily available and the match doesn't mean so much is quite another. Research conducted by European football's governing body UEFA on ticketed events - and not including motor racing events such as F1, NASCAR, IndyCar and MotoGP - found that rugby's Six Nations tournament came out on top in a table of average attendance, beating the NFL (National Football League) into second, with football's World Cup third, the Rugby World Cup fourth and football's European Championship fifth. With a Six Nations match, there are no gimmicks. There's some pre-match entertainment outside the stadium, but apart from that, it's all about 80 minutes of rugby. And yet according to UEFA's figures, matches have an average attendance of 72,000, beating NFL's average of 68,400. Coming back to the original point about the Super Bowl being a one-off, the Six Nations figures are inevitably helped by the fact the tournament features only 15 games each year, and only two or three of those games will be played at home for each country. That's simple supply and demand. Reliable attendance figures for F1 are not as easily available, but as a general trend, there are vast differences between circuits.
While Silverstone attracted an impressive 139,000 on British Grand Prix race day, the German GP at Hockenheim, by contrast, managed just 57,000. It required 60,000 to break even. Promotion, then, is incredibly important - and this is something American sports do tremendously well. For the Super Bowl, there was a week-long build up focused not only on generating interest in Houston and maximising gains for local business as well as the host venue, but also across America and the rest of the world. A structured plan is put in place, with events on-site co-ordinated, campaigns sent out on social media, and sponsors working hand-in-hand with the governing body and teams to promote themselves and in turn the event itself. It sounds so simple. You can attend some grands prix, such as in China, and away from the circuit you won't know there is an F1 race going on. There's nothing at the airport, no billboards along the main roads - and no adverts in magazines, promotional material, TV commercials or F1 personalities on big TV shows. It's ridiculous. Drivers should be going into schools promoting motorsport, convincing the kids to ask their parents to take them to the grand prix. There should be F1 roadshows across the city. Ahead of the British GP, for example, Lewis Hamilton could do a demo along the Mall and then be a guest on stage at a pre-race event in Trafalgar Square.
As the demonstration event in London proved in 2004, the crowds will come. A claimed figure of 500,000 people watched eight F1 cars complete a course between Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus back then. Liberty Media is already making steps in this area. Whereas there was no marketing department under the Bernie Ecclestone regime, F1's new owners plan to create a dedicated team that is expected to be on par with the sizeable department run by the NFL. The TV side of the business is somewhat harder to develop. Competition for people's attention is huge. In the UK not only are there hundreds of channels available on Sky and cable, but the growth of on-demand services such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer have changed the way people watch. So how do you get people to sit down in front of their TV? It's clearly not impossible because 72% of TVs in US households that were in use at the time of the Super Bowl were tuned into the showpiece event. And that does not include the people watching in bars around the country. Part of the event's success is that it inspires people to get together, whether that is at a friend's house, a bar or at a venue hosting a Super Bowl party. When F1's new bosses talk of turning the calendar into 20 Super Bowls, hopefully the goal is to attempt to create a Super Bowl atmosphere in each country, rather than targeting a global Super Bowl-style following that would be difficult to replicate. If fans had more reasons to talk about F1, and there was something for a greater cross-section of people, perhaps that would encourage them to get together to watch a grand prix. Perhaps, ahead of each race, there could be a short set by an A-lister like Taylor Swift.
The other problem is actually watching motorsport. From 2019, all live F1 races will move behind a pay wall, since Sky has exclusive rights. That immediately reduces the number of people who will tune in, a figure that has already diminished following the BBC's pull-out. When the coverage switched to Channel 4 for 2016, the audience was down around 37%. When Channel 4's figures were combined with Sky's, not including on-demand numbers, there was a drop of 29.7% from an average of 3.74million per race to 2.63million. The solution could be to follow the NFL, National Basketball Association (NBA) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) by creating an online subscription service. The latter, for example, charges £9.99 per month for its WWE Network service that gives you access to over 7000 hours of coverage that includes archive footage and live action, headlined by 16 events which were previously only available on pay-per-view. You could argue that will hurt the broadcasting rights fees, since a move to online subscriptions will reduce the attraction of platforms such as Sky's. But WWE structures its programming so it still has two live shows per week that are broadcast exclusively on conventional TV, totalling five hours between them. When it announced in 2014 it was launching its subscription service, it also revealed new global TV deals that brought in around £160million, up from around £87m in the previous rotation. The subscription service is working for WWE. While its numbers peaked at 1.8m active subscribers in April 2016, that included roughly 300,000 people utilising a free 30-day trial for 'Wrestlemania' (its own Super Bowl). Official figures from late in 2016, traditionally a quieter time of year in its schedule, suggested there were around 1.45 million paid users, with a Q4 update due this week. If the TV rights renewal figures are lower than expected in future, the WWE will hope to soften the loss with an increasing income from its subscription service.
Then the financial side of F1 needs to be addressed. A pot of £775million was distributed across the 11 teams in 2016, but the split was far from even. At one end of the scale, Ferrari received around £154million that included special historic payments and covered almost 20% of the total given to teams. At the other end, Manor got just £38million. In contrast, NFL teams equally shared a pot of around £5.7billion in revenues, which includes sponsorships, broadcast deals, licensing and merchandise sales, from the 2016 season, based on data released by the Green Bay Packers. That meant each of the 32 teams received around £179million, which enabled them to remain in business even if they had a bad season. F1 teams being more closely matched in budget terms would surely have a positive impact on the racing and therefore the appeal of the show. And on the subject of finances, something needs to be done regarding the fees circuits pay and the restrictions that come with that deal, such as trackside sponsorship, which is currently controlled by Formula One Management. It isn't right that a venue such as Silverstone can attract 139,000 spectators on race day and is still struggling to hold on to the British GP, since the escalating fee structure that Ecclestone built in to its contract could force the venue to activate its break clause this year.
Post-Super Bowl, Monday morning's headlines were dominated by Lady Gaga's spectacular performance in which she jumped off the roof of Houston's NRG stadium and was illuminated by the light radiating from hundreds of drones. There were 2.2million tweets about the #PepsiHalftime show during the 20-minute live performance, and 5.1million tweets about Gaga during a one-hour period around her performance. But that performance was matched by an epic contest on the pitch as the Patriots produced the greatest comeback in the history of the showpiece event. The now five-time winners beat the Falcons 34-28 in overtime, having trailed by 25 points in the third quarter. The previous record comeback was 10 points, and never before has a Super Bowl gone into overtime. That came after the NFL had suffered an 8% ratings drop during the regular season, which was the first time its viewership had declined in four years. There had also been complaints that the games had been dragged out by lucrative commercial advertisements. That appeared to have little impact on the Super Bowl, which remained as popular as ever. Liberty must be wary that even the biggest sports are facing challenging times attracting audiences outside marquee events, and that the action itself must remain a focus. As FIA president Jean Todt said recently: "For me, Formula 1 is great. The championship we enjoyed last year was a fight until the last corner. It would be the wrong message [to suggest F1 is in need of dramatic change]." Ross Brawn and Sean Bratches have quite a job on their hands to find that balance and the changes will not happen overnight. Let's hope Carey gives them the time to deliver.
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