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Want to watch every race of the 2012 F1 season live, but hate the thought of bolting a satellite dish to the side of your house, or Rupert Murdoch? You’ve got another option thanks to Virgin.
Virgin Media’s struck a deal with Sky to broadcast its Sky Sports F1 channel from March, allowing you to watch every free practice, qualifying, and race live and uninterrupted. The catch is that you have to have the rest of the Sky Sports channels to get the F1 channel too. But Sky’s apparently working on getting the interactive elements of it’s brand new channel working through Virgin, so at least it’ll be the unadulterated experience.
I was pretty pissed when Sky tied-up the entire F1 season’s TV rights leaving the BBC with only half the races live for the 2012 season — I still am if I’m honest. But while this isn’t exactly free-to-air (a £22.50 a month add-on with anything better than basic “M” TV, or £28 a month if you’re on Virgin’s lowest tier), it’s better than nothing if you’re a Virgin subscriber, I guess. [Virgin]
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Still not really an alternative to watching them on iPlayer that evening is it? First of all I’ll have to buy a TV. Worse still, a TV licience, to fund the very institution who failed to secure the rights to about the only thing I’d want to watch on TV. Bitter, me, never.
I think I’d rather like the idea of bolting a satellite dish to the side of Rupert Murdoch if it meant i could watch all the races…
Quite frankly I’m not playing that much to watch the F1, it’s been crap the last few seasons.
I have to agree – the way Vettel just shoots off and wins the first ten or so races and secures the title without any competition really annoys me. Vettel is a great guy, but I really want to see more action, more tension, and more crashes! There have hardly been any crashes in the last two seasons, compared with previous ones. Not that I want the drivers to get hurt, but then again, they rarely do these days.
I would pay £30 for a season on the BBC, I wouldn’t pay per month for Sky or Virgin as I never watch any of the channels and it becomes an expensive waste. I bet the F1 fan base in the UK dies over the years thanx to this move. I would torrent it instead but there isn’t much point watching a race if it isn’t live, would probably get ruined for me on the news or something.
Truth is the BBC screwed everyone that pays for tv licence.
I am not watching it live when it is on sky, in fact I will make a point of not signing up for sky. I will just watch it on the iPlayer after.
But to be honest I could see this coming, with people paying for sky sports in order to see the premiership, when setanta was still alive people were paying setanta and sky to see the games and if this trend keeps up soon the World Cup and every other sport will be a sky monopoly. Exclusive deals are terrible for the competition and customers. Someone has to do something about this, screw this old fart and anyone who tries to dominate the market by monopolizing it.
I wouldn’t blame it on the BBC – F1 was just demanding too much for the rights and the only viable way to show it was to share them with Sky. It’s hard to justify spending hundreds of millions of £ on one thing, no matter how awesome it is.
Let’s just hope vettel isn’t allowed to ruin the 2012 season.
I can’t wait for the new season. This sharing deal was the only way the BBC could keep hold of any races at all so you’ll have to deal with it. Sky will be great I’m sure.
And the last few seasons have been the most exciting ever.
I kind of expected to be able to get F1 on Virgin anyway as you can get Sky Sports already. Didn’t realise they were showing it on a new channel, they already have 4 sports channels.
Seems a bit steep to have to pay an extra £22/m. Think I’ll stick to Sky Go on my iPad or go to a mate’s house.
Bad move… I have been a fan of F1 since i was about 5 years old and have not missed a season since, thats 35 years!! There is no way in the current climate i’m going to pay that much a month, and if i can’t see the whole season then i won’t watch it at all, not even for free……..
I don’t currently have Sky Sports and as I don’t watch football, golf or cricket, I’d be paying £22.50 extra per month to watch F1 – a cost of £20.25 per race exclusive to Sky.
But if you factor in downloading early races that I’d have recorded anyway and boring races (Hungary, Bahrain) that I could live without, it’s a ‘real’ cost of £40.50 per race that I’d be disappointed to miss.
http://onearmedfreddy.co.uk/blog/2012/01/16/f1-on-virgin-media
Doesn’t seem like great value.