Posts tagged jenson button
The fans don’t follow F1… they follow the Brands and Atheletes
Nov 18th
Formula One television audiences in Spain and Italy fell drastically this year, reflecting disappointing performances by Spanish driver Fernando Alonso and Italian car manufacturer Ferrari, which suffered its worst season in 16 years.
According to the latest sports viewing survey from TV Sports Markets and Eurodata TV Worldwide, the big falls in Spain and Italy were partly counterbalanced by a significant lift in UK audiences. Viewership in the other two top European markets, France and Germany, remained broadly stable.
Audiences in Spain dropped 29 per cent on 2008, with Alonso’s worst-ever season coinciding with coverage shifting from what was the country’s leading commercial broadcaster, Telecinco, to smaller rival La Sexta. La Sexta’s live coverage averaged just under three million viewers per race and drew an audience share of 31 per cent.
Audiences for Italian public-service broadcaster Rai fell 21 per cent against 2008, when Ferrari won the championship, averaging 5.6 million viewers per race. Further analysis shows, perhaps surprisingly, that almost 40 per cent of the audience was female. Just under 50 per cent of the audience was aged over 55.
In the UK, Jenson Button’s championship season provided a perfect start for public-service broadcaster the BBC, which took over the rights at the start of this year after commercial rival ITV opted to concentrate its limited resources on Champions League football. Audiences were 16 per cent on ITV’s audiences last year and the highest since the BBC last had the rights in 1996.
In France, audiences for commercial broadcaster TF1 rose less than one per cent to 3.1 million. Some 33 per cent of the audience were women, slightly lower than the gender split for Champions League football, where women accounted for 35 per cent of TF1’s average audience last season. Forty-nine per cent of the Formula One audience in France is over 50 years of age, the same proportion for the Champions League. In Germany, RTL averaged 5.2 million viewers per race, with the penultimate race of the season in Brazil attracting the season-high of 7.2 million viewers and a 28-per-cent audience share.
Sources: TV Sports Markets, Eurodata TV Worldwide, Mediametrie – BARB – AGF/GfK Fernsehforschung – AUDITEL – TNS Audiencia de Medios – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Toyota finally quits F1
Nov 4th
Toyota has confirmed that it is pulling out of Formula 1 - The world’s largest car manufacturer will concentrate on its core business. The team failed to win any of the 139 races it entered after making its F1 debut in 2002 but was fifth in the 2009 constructors’ championship… this despite having one of the biggest budgets in the premier class. Toyota’s withdrawal leaves the sport with no Japanese team after Honda left F1 at the start of the 2009 season. They become the third manufacturer to quit the sport in the last 11 months after BMW announced it was leaving in July. Honda were of course replaced by BrawnGP, who went on to win this year’s drivers’ championship with Jenson Button and the constructors’ championship… again congratulations to all the team in Brackley, UK – an amazing ‘fairy tale’ happy ending.
Maybe this is ‘back to the future’ for F1 – more independent teams and less ‘manufacturers’ – with Lotus (where Trulli may be headed??), Manor, USGP and Campos racing to make the 2010 grid… who will be next to join the fray? Maybe F1 is beginning a new era.
Virgin win for BRAWNGP
Apr 1st
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, which spent an estimated US$250,000 sponsoring the BrawnGP Formula One team at the Australian Grand Prix where Jenson Button drove to victory – the team’s first at their first ever event, achieved global TV coverage worth US$10.428 million according to figures compiled by SportsPro magazine. SportsPro, which uses the Margaux Matrix Digital Eye scanning system that minutely analyses every brand featured in the host TV feed, calculates that the BrawnGP team was on screen for 42 minutes 38 seconds during the qualifying and race broadcasts. The Virgin logos were fully exposed for 8 minutes 56 seconds. The Virgin deal is expected to end after this week’s Malaysian Grand Prix… but if they podium again who knows? http://twitter.com/BrawnGP