Following the announcement on Friday morning that the BBC are to share the broadcasting rights with BskyB from 2012, F1 teams are seeking clarification on what the deal means.
The deal, which has infuriated F1 fans in the UK and other European countries who share the BBC feed, and has made it into the top-10 “trending topics worldwide” on social networking site, Twitter, and could mean F1 fans having to pay to watch all of the F1 races.
In basic principal, BBC will hand-over the majority of the rights to BskyB who will be showing the sport on one of their Sky Sports channels, a pay-to-view subscription service, with the Beeb only showing 10 of the race weekends live – these have not been announced yet.
However, McLaren boss, Martin Whitmarsh has said that this deal may breach the Concorde Agreement,”We’ve got a range of safeguards within Concorde,” he told Autosport.
“The right thing to do is to explore how the Formula 1 coverage is going to be dealt with in the future, and take a view from there,” he said. “I don’t know how many homes in the UK have Sky, but it is a pretty high proportion.”
Whitmarsh has said that although the deal is “interesting” that his team, as well as the other 11 teams within the sport, require more information on how the deal will work.
“I don’t think anyone should be immediately reacting to say this is good, bad, or indifferent”
What we need to understand is whether the large audience we currently enjoy in Formula 1 will be maintained. I think we also need to understand exactly how this is being done.”
If you’re not happy with the thought of having to pay-to-view F1, remember to sign the official online petition – it take seconds and could make a huge difference. Click here
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