JANUARY 5, 2024

German fans to get seven Grand Prix on free tv

The German arm of Sky TV and the historic RTL channel gave the German Formula 1 fans a great Christmas gift with the announcement that seven Grand Prix will be broadcast live, a luxury they hadn’t enjoyed in the last couple of years, from the moment RTL decided it could no longer pay the huge fees demanded by Formula 1.

The German arm of Sky TV and the historic RTL channel gave the German Formula 1 fans a great Christmas gift with the announcement that seven Grand Prix will be broadcast live, a luxury they hadn’t enjoyed in the last couple of years, from the moment RTL decided it could no longer pay the huge fees demanded by Formula 1.

That decision came at the same time Formula 1 decided it was commercial better to sell the exclusive TV broadcasting rights in Germany to Sky, as it was announced at the end of 2021, meaning that in the last two years any German fan wishing to watch practice, qualifying and the races live had to subscribe to an expensive pay TV package and the least one can say if that the viewership numbers in that country plummeted since RTL stopped broadcasting the Grand Prix.

In the last year Formula 1 races were broadcast on free TV, there was an average of 3.13 million viewers per Grand Prix, but in 2022 there were only 980.000 viewers, in average, watching Formula 1 on Sky Germany and that number went further down to an average of just 782.000 viewers during the last season, also due to the fact Max Verstappen dominated the season and took the element of unpredictability away from the sport. Compare those numbers with those of 2010, when RTL was on its own showing all Formula 1 qualifying and races, and the fact there were nearly 6,3 million Germans tunning in to watch the sport just shows how much the numbers have come down in a country that during the 20 years Michael Schumacher was racing, became one of Formula 1’s biggest markets.

In reality even the poor numbers from 2021 and 2022 were massively helped by four races being handed to RTL but with no deal in place for 2023, the viewing numbers in Germany reached an all time low, with Sky even resorting to showing the four “free races” on its YouTube channel, without much success.

That’s why the Murdoch-owned company has gone back to RTL, offering a much more attractive package, fearing that 2024 and 2025 will also be tough years in terms of attracting subscribers to its Formula 1 channel, especially is Max Verstappen and Red Bull continue to dominate the sport. Contrary to what happened in 2021 and 2022, RTL will also be allowed to broadcast the qualifying sessions and if there’s no official confirmation of what Grand Prix will be available on live TV, it’s already certain the Bahrain even, the opening round of the season, will be one of them.

It’s worth noting that all the deals done between Formula 1 and the Sky group – for Germany, Italy and the UK – expire at the end of 2027 and with the viewing numbers falling in Germany and in the United Kingdom, with both companies spending millions of dollars in on-site production, as they bring huge crews to all Grand Prix, it’s uncertain that the Murdoch group will be willing to keep putting hundreds of millions of dollars on the table in face of a reduced income. Only in Italy Sky’s numbers have gone up, in spite of Ferrari’s lack of success, the Italians also running a much streamlined operation in one third of the races, being on site with a crew of just four people to cut the production costs down.