Toyota Pulling ITV F1 Sponsorship.

[gringottsdirect]

Toyota have pulled their sponsership of ITV F1 two years into their four year agreement, stating they have achieved their awareness goals much earlier than planned.
This leaves ITV months to find a replacement sponser.
How will this alter ITV F1 coverage, if at all ?

[DriverT]

Really? Do you have an article to back this up? Why are they not committing a breach of contract?

[gringottsdirect]

Just realised I can't spell, but I do have a link !

http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketin...073273,00.html

[DriverT]

Oh that's not a good thing. It will be interesting to see who they take onboard to sponsor the coverage instead. Their agreement with Toyota must have allowed them to do this, then.

[Adam43]

Well the site isn't updated yet

[MrBluesman1]

Maybe they are going to pay Panis £5 mill to go away and spend the other £20mil on getting J Villenueve

[McKay]

what happened to texaco? who used to do it i think.

i wouldnt of thought it would affect it if they can find a sponsor

[Sodemo]

Have they just pulled out of contract as of now?

Surely ITV will recieve a pay off for Toyota breaking contract (unless they had clauses).

[Kojima_KE007]

I just hope ITV find a good new sponsor to fill-in the space that Toyota left...

[Super Tourer]

I believe they claimed a 'refund' from ITV last year (02), due to the drop in TV viewing figures, so they obviously hasve 'performance related' type clauses based on viewing figures.

However, I would guess that this year figures must have been up from (02,) and comparable with any exciting seasons in recent memory.

I hope this doesn't diminish ITV's commitment to F1 any further,with more qualifying sessions on delayed viewing. They will certainly be looking to fill the funding gap, as the sponsorship is helping towards the cost ITV had to pay to secure F1 TV rights.

I've seen a rumour that the BBC is preparing a bid for F1 when ITV's contract expires. The general fall in sports viewing rights means that it is likely to cost a lot less next time around, BBC Sport are anxious to regain some of the flagship sports coverage they lost in the high bidding wars of recent years.

[Super Tourer]

http://www.pitpass.com/news2/news.cfm?newsid=7884

More on this, including some interesting facts and figures.

[PaulSands]

just as an aside...is it mandatory or something that JV has to be mentioned in every single F1 thread ???

[ASCII Man]

I was wondering the same thing...
Especially because it always involves £20mil...

Get something new to laugh at for christ's sake because it's getting pretty old now...

[Adam43]

From STs link:

The figures below - provided by Eurodata Worldwide TV - show the average audience % rating of live F1 broadcasts to free-to-air channels.
2000 7%
2001 6.6%
2002 5.7%
2003 5.8%

It might even by independent of the 2002 non racing season. Perhaps a better level of coverage.
Also what happened between 2001 and 2002 to cause the drop. Michael won all teh championships so it can't be that. The racing declined, but this year is about the same. Oh wait there was a change in the commentary.

Hello, ITV, realise. It has now hit you were you care - This isn't viewer enjoyment, but advertising revenue.

[darcym]

Toyota pulling the plug on the advertising explains itv-f1.com's recent uptime in tons of popup adverts, annoying noisy flash adverts that can't be shut until half way through them, and general flooding of the site with adverts.

[Smokey 6 litre]

If they are really pulling the plug for the stated reason 'that they have met awareness figures' then they are the most stupid people that i have ever heard of.
With the good season we had last year more people will watch F1 next year, so their awareness figures will go even higher.
I wouldn't expect an F1 team to say we met our 30 point target in the first 9 races so were no going to develop that car anymore.

[Sodemo]

It always distgusts me the amount of ad time ITV gives during the Grand Prix.
I watched the 2001 German GP in an Italian bar (in Italy!), and the Italian broadcasters put I think 2 ad breaks of about 15 seconds each in the race.
It was the terrestrial feed.

[touringlegend]

It was Toyota GB that funded the ITV sponsorship, right ? Maybe they have some other projects up their sleeves..

[Sodemo]

ITV-F1.com still have "Toyota" banners on their site:confused: :confused:

[Peter Mallett]

Originally posted by The Monster
It always distgusts me the amount of ad time ITV gives during the Grand Prix.
I watched the 2001 German GP in an Italian bar (in Italy!), and the Italian broadcasters put I think 2 ad breaks of about 15 seconds each in the race.
It was the terrestrial feed.

Are you certain of that Monster? I believe RAIUNO is pay per view for the GP hence no ad breaks.

The worst for ad breaks is (IMHO) RTL 3 and 5.

The best was PTP (thats "RTR") in Russia.

[Asp]

Originally posted by Super Tourer
I've seen a rumour that the BBC is preparing a bid for F1 when ITV's contract expires. The general fall in sports viewing rights means that it is likely to cost a lot less next time around, BBC Sport are anxious to regain some of the flagship sports coverage they lost in the high bidding wars of recent years.

I think that's quite a long standing idea now. I do now firmly believe that they will put in a bit for the ideas you explained. They will also have to improve the coverage giving at least the same amount of time given by ITV - Bernie has made that clear in the past. There's the added rumour on top of that - which is more speculative - that if the Bakersville feed is recreated and goes terrestrial (as is often suggested), the Beeb would be better to air it given their experience of Digital TV/ BBCi. Don't get your hopes of for that happening in the near future though...

[DriverT]

The BBC coverage was always incredibly poor. People speak of ITVs coverage being poor, but I clicked my heals the day it moved to ITV. Hopefully ITV can keep hold of it.

[Sodemo]

Yeah ITV would be fine if they didn't have any commercial breaks!

[DriverT]

Yes sure, but they have to pay for it somehow. And it still p***es on the BBC's coverage.

[Adam43]

There is more coverage on ITV and there scheduling is better then the early days of the beeb. However the standard is worse. In the last year or two the coverage was excellent on beeb. The anchor man knew what he was talking about and there was no inadequate comment.

Quality not quantity is what I crave.

I think if we see the beeb get it back we will see a much improved standard. Not least because they could use the advantages of digital coverage.

I'm not talking about the F1digital+ type stuff, although the beeb do have the technology to broadcast that. I am talking about simple options of having extra data avaiable, the choice of beeb commentary, radio 5 commentary or even no commentary.