Whereas football executives such as FC Bayern's Karl-Heinz Rummenigge cannot wait to regain free-to-air live coverage of the UEFA Champions League once the current rights cycle (2018 - 2021) expires, Liberty Media's racing series felt the urgency to have to move back into pay-TV just one year into the exclusive three-year broadcasting deal with linear FTA-channel RTL. Thus, Sky did not only "listened to the wishes of many of [their] customers [🙄] who missed our way of broadcasting Formula One last year [🔥 shots fired @ ad-loaded RTL]" but set the stage for 2021 when F1's management probably will get what they wanted from the beginning: A better customer proposition for its self-owned and -operated D2C streaming service F1TV by pulling F1 completely out of the free-TV ecosystem in Germany: 🤫
Germany 🇩🇪 is one of Formula One's biggest, most mature markets, in which it's all about monetization instead of growth or increasing market penetration like in the 🇺🇸 United States or 🇨🇳 China - markets in which it granted comprehensive free-to-air live coverage via ESPN and CCTV, respectively. However, there has continued to be extensive coverage on free-TV channel RTL in Germany last season as well, totally bucking the trend in other European 🇪🇺 markets in which it has pulled its broadcasts mostly out of free-TV in order to promote its subscription-based OTT service F1TV:
- 🇫🇷 France: TF1 (free-to-air) only with 4x races per season), Canal+ (pay-TV) with all races [starting 2018]
- 🇪🇸 Spain: Teledeporte (free-to-air) only with Spanish GP, Movistar+ (pay-TV) with all races [starting 2018]
- 🇮🇹 Italy: Rai (free-to-air) only with Italian GP, Sky Italia (pay-TV) with all races [starting 2018]
- 🇬🇧 UK: Sky UK (pay-TV) giving up exclusive streaming rights to facilitate F1TV launch [starting 2019]
Returning to Sky Deutschland just one year into a three-year deal with free-to-air broadcaster RTL is just the latest move by Liberty Media to make F1TV somehow work in one of its most important and monetizable markets.
Unfortunately for Liberty Media, it is also a traditionally tough environment for paid media services, especially due to that deeply-entrenched, strong free-TV landscape that has shaped consumption habits of German customers and does not exist to this extent in many other national media markets. ☝🏼
My thoughts on a somewhat shady deal. ⬇️
