A Winning Formula

Formula 1 is one of the great successes of the sporting world. Famed for its glamour, wealth and high octane excitement it has millions of fans in just about every country on the planet and continues to grow in popularity with each passing year.

As with so many successful sports, it relies on television rights to bring in a lot of money. The television rights bring in an audience for the broadcasters, but they also offer excellent exposure to the teams, enabling them to strike extremely lucrative advertising deals.

In the UK, nearly all the top level sport (or at least the sport that is not legally required to be shown on free-to-air television) has found a home on Sky. Sky has revolutionised sport in the UK, and continues to do so with HDTV and, more recently 3DTV. Recently, the talk in the press has been that News Corp is looking to take over Formula 1 with the source of this rumour coming from nowhere else but Sky News itself.

Unlike football and cricket, where advertising earns the teams money but not necessarily enormous sums of money, Formula 1 relies heavily on advertising income. The best way of generating a lot of advertising income is to have a lot of exposure, and generally speaking the best way of getting exposure is to be shown on free-to-air television. So, at the present time, it is not altogether clear that the teams would be keen on a shift to satellite television in one of the Formula 1s core markets.

That said, the argument for a move to Sky is strongly put forward by just about every sport that has partnered up with the broadcaster. Broadcasting rights often go for a lot more money when Sky are in the mix and this always leads to more money being available for investment in grass roots sport. News Corp, for its part, seems confident that it could revolutionise the already incredibly successful model of F1, and there is no doubt that this revolution would mean more money for the teams (which is bound to garner support).

Ultimately, Formula 1s fate will be decided by negotiations amongst the power-brokers in the sport, the teams, Bernie Ecclestones company, and the FIA council, and there is no saying for sure what any of these parties actually want. Still, as one of the last great sporting jewels not in Skys crown, it would be hard to bet against F1 eventually finding a home on satellite television.