LMS & Le Mans to be on Eurosport in 2008

[Mal]

I was just reading this article on Sportscarpros and picked up the comment that Le Mans and LMS are switching from Motors to Eurosport this year - I dont think this has been mentioned before and although it may not be true Sportscarpros is a pretty informed website

http://www.sportscarpros.com/cottonb...an/default.htm

[Kai]

Cool beans if we get Martin Haven/Gareth Rees... or really anyone other than Carlton Kirby.

[dj4monie]

If I am not mistaken Martin does WTCC for Eurosport, I would say we'll prolly get him for LMS coverage. Viva La Internet!

[rdjones]

Interesting, if that is ture will Eurosport show the whole of Le Mans and the LMS races in full or will pull there normal trick and cut away to Handball?

[Mike_Wooshy]

this isnt cool this is a disaster ! Motors offered a great service while eurosports is **** poor, they will start to cut away mid programe argh no no no no non no no!!!

[Satorian]

Is this perhaps part of Audi's doing? They didn't want to enter LMS until there was proper TV coverage, right? Sounds like it would be right up their alley.

I'd love to see full race coverage, but I just can't see it happening. A 1-hour recap plus interviews and documentary footage seems to me like the most probable package.

[Justin Moran]

Originally Posted by rdjones

Interesting, if that is ture will Eurosport show the whole of Le Mans and the LMS races in full or will pull there normal trick and cut away to Handball?

My thoughts exactly, historicaly their coverage has been dire, They wont show the LMS races in their entireity you'll be lucky to get an hour of highlights at best and their coverage of the Lemans 24Hr was at best shoddy and very sporadic, timings werent and still arent adhered to.

Not a good move fro the best race series in the world.

Suspect F1 may have got wind of impending popularity and the FIA have moved to scupper the series again?

[SebringMG]

Very bad news !! Why take away a race series from Motors that has historically provided the BEST coverage EVER and go back to a channel that has historically cut away to watch snooker, darts, lawn bowls or some other pointless marginalised sport ?

If the Daytona 24 was a warm up then LM (and the LMS) will be a disaster !!

[Piglet]

Originally Posted by SebringMG

Very bad news !! Why take away a race series from Motors that has historically provided the BEST coverage EVER and go back to a channel that has historically cut away to watch snooker, darts, lawn bowls or some other pointless marginalised sport ?

If the Daytona 24 was a warm up then LM (and the LMS) will be a disaster !!

Very very bad news I would think. As said for Daytona Eurosport couldn't keep the the schedule at all and I really can't see them showing hours and hours of LM. I shall miss Motors LMS coverage as well....

[Dani Filth]

eurosport coverage of the lm24 wasn't that great before ..
but at least i'll be there for the 24 this year . so it won't affect me that much

[SALEEN S7R]

Ugh this is terrible news, sure in part live coverage is better than no live coverage at all but I remember what Eurosport did with their FIA GT coverage a couple of years ago, and well it wasnt good. Why oh why switch from Motors TV? As has been said im sure Audi have something to do with this. Still, on the plus side if Eurosport are covering the races what are the chances of better picture quality?

[Mal]

One can only hope that the Audi / Peugeot influence will have an effect on the production standards as well.

[The Badger]

Originally Posted by SALEEN S7R

Why oh why switch from Motors TV

Eurosport probably has a bigger coverage catch than motors Tv .

Plus ..... if the ACO or whoever is responsible for LMS promotion did their job properly in the first place , it might have stayed with Motors TV !!!

[PascaLM]

To me, it's a disaster, la grosse catastrophe as they say in Marseille.
We won't have only handball, i'm afraid, Rob... Snooker ? The last gymnatics championship from 9 to 10 pm ? Oh no... it should be a miracle if Eurosport gives the whole coverage instead of MotorsTV.

This year I burned 6 DVD with the whole practice sessions and the whole race ! Fantastic. (It's better to be on place anyway).

[Mal]

What would be better would be if the full live coverage could remain on Motors with limited live coverage / edited highlights on Eurosport. The two channels seem to share a lot of commentators etc, so is this possible?

[isynge]

Echoing Mal's comments, a solution whereby both Le Mans and the LMS could benefit from having both full live coverage on a dedicated channel, satisfying its niche audience (let's be realistic!) and then a more broad based channel having a well produced highlights show, or, in the case of the 24 Hours, some plum bits like the first and last hours, would be ideal.

Thinking about it, it's probably worth thinking about how packed the grandstands are at Le Mans during various periods of the day - they could profit from being shown on mainstream channels - the small hours of the morning are probably more times for the die-hard enthusiast.

I'd always envisaged a combination of Motors and domestic TV being the way of satisfying this, but equally maybe some form of Eurosport coverage might work.

[NightStalk3r]

if i remember correctly Motors TV's contract for Le Mans goes upto 2009 or 2010.

[Justin Moran]

Originally Posted by NightStalk3r

if i remember correctly Motors TV's contract for Le Mans goes upto 2009 or 2010.

Thats true. I seem to remember Martin Haven saying they had secured the rights for the next x years on the broadcast last year. Lets hope the Eurosport deal is to show edited highlights.

[Bernard Bram]

Originally Posted by The Badger

Eurosport probably has a bigger coverage catch than motors Tv .

Depends if it's Eurosport or Eurosport2. The latter is as bad as MotorsTV concernig coverage, both are payTV. If it's Eurosport it wont be full coverage. A one hour highlight at one o'clock in the morning perhaps. Tennis, Handball, Snooker (wich i really like), winter sports and some third rate football game in Asia all have higher priority.

[Mal]

Originally Posted by Bernard Bram

Depends if it's Eurosport or Eurosport2. The latter is as bad as MotorsTV concernig coverage, both are payTV. If it's Eurosport it wont be full coverage. A one hour highlight at one o'clock in the morning perhaps. Tennis, Handball, Snooker (wich i really like), winter sports and some third rate football game in Asia all have higher priority.

That might of course depend on how much money is being thrown at it by Audi and Peugeot

[Sportscarguy08]

Originally Posted by Mike_Wooshy

this isnt cool this is a disaster ! Motors offered a great service while eurosports is **** poor, they will start to cut away mid programe argh no no no no non no no!!!

I agree. I think this is a downgrade of coverage. Hopefully it will not be as bad as Speed Channels coverage was when it switched from flag to flag on Speedvision to what it is now.

The only positive things from FIA GT coverage on Eurosport was martin haven and the requirement of onboard cameras. However I like the coverage currently for the FIA GT.

[Adam43]

NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It won't be on when it says so and the coverage will be poor. Motors wasn't flashy, but it had the race and covered it well. It had more coverage than ever before (will we get scrutineering, practice, all the race?).

I await (dread) full details...

[AstonGeoff]

If Eurosport stick with full coverage of the LMS rounds then I'll be happy, but somehow I doubt it! Their coverage of Daytona wasn't brilliant, but not all of that was their own fault.

Don't forget that Motors switched to other live events during the LMS races last year, so it wasn't perfect! But they do have extensively repeated highlights progs. Motors are just that a Motors based channel, Eurosport is a hotchpotch of all sorts, so I can't see them doing the same.

One of the reasons I got Sky was for the Motors coverage of the LMS, now they go and do this, bummer.

Lets hope for those that don't go to Le Mans that it stays with Motors and their exteneded coverage. I'll be at Le Mans so it won't bother me much.

[Subaru_WRX_STi]

what a disaster, clearly MotorsTV done well with both Le Mans 24H, with a great flag to flag coverage, the LMS too was good ! so why changing now ? the ACO is becoming just like the FIA...money, and about Eurosport, we will have endless short breakes and TV spots, just like in MotoGP and WTCC !

finally about Martin Heaven, he is top Europsort commentators, as well doing Le Mans for....MotorsTV !!

[Bentley03]

Ok guys, listen up................

It would appear that this news has reached the public domain before interested parties were ready to announce. This is in no way an official statement, but it is my understanding that coverage of the Le Mans Series and Le Mans itself will indeed switch from MotorsTV to Eurosport in 2008. We can only speculate as to the reasons, but I would suggest that along with increased manufacturer involvement in both the Le Mans Series and Le Mans itself, the cost of purchasing the rights to cover these events has also increased. And, to take that speculation one step further, the increase in cost may be such that is now beyond the reach of a small specialist motor racing channel such as MotorsTV.

On a personal level, I would like to thank Martin Haven, Mark Cole and all those at MotorsTV for their quite exceptional efforts to bring us what has been pioneering, unparalleled and groundbreaking coverage of Le Mans over the past two years, and for presenting the fans with the opportunity to watch 1000km Le Mans Series races live and in their entirety for the very first time. Thank you!