Sean Bratches defends F1 internet-pay TV plans

Let me say this: if you move away from more accessible channels without enabling some sort of internet streaming, you are dooming F1. Not only are there more popular sports like F1 and Hockey around, if you make F1 less accessible there will be little reason for people to watch it in favour of other sports. And longterm, you are likely to forget about accessing kids and the likes, y'know, the future fans.

These companies don't think long-term, unfortunately. What kid is going to start following F1 if he can only follow a quarter of the races? I sure as hell wouldn't have.

Give us 4k streaming for f1 races, selectable onboard cameras of every car with thermo option. full race weekend track coverage like SKY with race replay options and the vault showing upscaled old F1 races we can rewatch from F1's golden era and i'll gladly pay $100 for it.

F1 coverage in Canada is mostly terrible, we have to pay a premium just to watch parts of qualifying and a 2hr5min slot for the race, we miss the most of the race weekend and post race coverage. last season it improved but still no practice sessions

why force F1 fans to only have limited access due to cable companies when F1 itself is owned by a media company who can bring it to us direct and uncut.

fans should have access to watch the race from onboard cameras if they prefer, Le mans and the endurance racing series do online coverage right, some are even free.

I get the frustration with races not being on 'free tv', however I understand the reasoning behind going towards pay tv. The reality is that in most countries around the globe it's not free anyway. People complaining about this are almost exclusively in Europe. It's never been free in the Americas or Asia. I like the direction they are moving in. 25 to 30% free TV races is better than 0%. If they make more money, then maybe they'll make them more readily available. The comparisons to sports like Hockey, Soccer, or Basketball are not good, because you whereas in those sports you have hundreds of events every year, Formula 1 has 19 or 20.

RaceTown is frustrated and justifiably so. Canadian coverage is brutally crude and by our low-budget standards, still expensive.
What I can't fathom is that advertisers pay for the privilege of having viewers despise them for interrupting the racing action. Imagine cutting off the Cup Final or an NFL game to insert commercials while the game goes on. How long would that last.?
But for F1, that's the norm.
Bring on the digital so we can stream what and when. Then I can cut the cord.

in Australia we will get one race.
The australian one because of local laws.
that dooms it for me.
F1 is no longer in my life.
i would be interested in paying to watch if the pay tv service was flexible.
Unfortunately i have to buy a basic package plus a sport package which is something like 80 to 100 $ a month.
they can stick that.
i would be interested in say 20$ a month for just F1 but they won't even discuss such s thing.
i don't suppose they care what i think but others will follow and as someone else on here stated young kids won't take it up.

We need to be able to access just the sports we want, rather than having to buy a channel package on Foxtel that costs $50 a month just to watch a couple of F1 Grands Prix. I am not interested in the other sports the package includes at all, and it's very expensive for how many hours I actually watch it.

I'd love to subscribe to a pay service that streams all F1 sessions in HD and charges per Grand Prix. I'd be straight onto it if they offered it.

€50 a year for a digital stream (if correct) is a bargain! If they are good businessmen they will know that 10 million subscribers worldwide paying €50 each is a darn site better than 2 million paying €100 for paywall TV. “Bums on seats” the old theatre expression goes and this is no different.