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"Formula One 2011 Season"

Hi all,

Thought it would be nice to hear peoples thoughts on this years Formula One season, so decided to make a new thread for the topic.

Yep. No kids and wife around, so I'll be able to watch the whole race in peace and quiet!

Poor Renault...

SPA this weekend! Anyone else really looking forward to it? Always reminds me of the 1998 race.

Very happy to see Button get a win. Suffered so much bad luck in the season, definitely deserving of it. It seems McLaren are getting the best of it recently.

Today's race was great. Button put on a good show in the wet weather yet again and vettel/Alonso both did a solid job.

One question that springs to my mind is what must the sponsors make of this news? Without their investments there would be no international motorsport, surely if viewing figures are to diminish (which they must) then sponsorship could well end up suffering. The die hard fans of any sport will continue to follow it regardless of where it is being shown but I think a percentage of the sports casual viewers will slowly start to drift away. Doubt it'll be long before other sports such as Tennis & MotoGP go the same way.

It means that every sport I follow will be unavailable to me to watch. Football is for sky viewers alone now. NHL is for one on early in the morning, and secondly not on ESPN America too often, and you're extremely lucky if it's the match you want to watch. F1 down the drain.

Thanks for killing sport, television broadcasters.

I know I'm not a big F1 fan but I can relate as both British and World Superbikes used to be shown on terrestrial TV. World Superbikes was then shown online for free on the WSBK website for a further season before Eurosport got that stopped as well. I doubt any sport is safe from this at the moment :(

First season I've properly gotten into watching F1. Extremely dissapointed. Not pleased at all.

I guess this is how football fans feel.

pete_21 wrote:
Afternoon F1 fans, don't know if you guys know about this but BBC appear to have joined forces with SKY to show next years races. Few people seem to be all that thrilled about it, link

Since the news yesterday, there have been a substantial number of complaints to the BBC. It's been forced to write a blanket statement about the deal:

"The BBC's response

We know that Formula 1 has an extremely passionate following in the UK and that some fans will be disappointed that not all races will be available exclusively live on the BBC from next season.

We are operating in a very tough financial climate and in common with all areas of the BBC, BBC Sport is having to make significant cost savings over the next few years in order to operate within the constraints of the licence fee settlement, therefore we have to make some difficult choices.

We believe this deal represents good value for money for licence fee payers. We retain live coverage of half of the race weekends and we will have extended highlights of the remaining races so we are pleased that all of the action from Formula 1 for the next seven seasons will remain on BBC television. Online coverage of the race weekends that we broadcast will remain the same, and we will carry all the news and reports from the rest of the season. Radio coverage will not change whilst the most popular races - the British Grand Prix, the Monaco Grand Prix and the final race of the season will continue to be broadcast live on BBC One."

Can I then pay them only a highlighted portion of my Licence Fee?