How many people watch pay for view sport

[astroron]

I am not going to pay $750:00 to watch F1 Grand Prix on FoxTel,
Or any other sport
The Viewing audience for F1 has decreased by 50% since the rights have been sold to Fox.
What are your thoughts on Pay for view Sports. :question:
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/33357440
Cheers:thumbsup:

[LewisM]

Let me go this far Ron - if we had to pay a television license like they do in the UK, our place wouldn't have a TV! We watch it that little.

I think I expressed my opinion of sports on Paul's Facebook post :)

[JB80]

I haven't used pay tv for a few years now and when I did it was for English language content more than anything.
If I need/want to watch anything then I will watch it online.

I wouldn't be adverse to paying for pay tv if it came to it though, it's more a matter of convenience.

[AussieTrooper]

Nope. Never have, never will. The day people started paying for it, the amount of footy on tv was always going to drop off.

[GeoffW1]

Hi,

I think I'd pay some amount of money for a top class paid service, that is

- few or no adverts
- no repeats in say, one month's content
- high definition
- a good spread of genres, eg, docos, nature, drama, sport etc
and so on

The reasoning is that free-to-air content is, I think, 90% garbage and getting worse, so no use looking there for the future. Like the situation in the USA.

Internet streaming is the wild card when you crystal ball gaze it, and it has the potential to render both free-to-air as it is now, and also the current Foxtel model, both obsolete.

The big trouble is that the infrastructure is not up to it right now, as Netflix shows at the moment. I pay Optus cable broadband extra cash for a so-called "speed pack" and it is a stupid waste of money. I can rent a movie, but not stream it in peak time.

Maybe Facebook is all we need. I think I'll post a photo there of my navel.

Cheers

[The_bluester]

Used to have Foxtel (Previously Austar) but ditched it a few years back when I worked out that what was mainly being watched were kids shows that on the whole were on FTA TV anyway!

I have been an avid F! tragic for a couple of decades, combine the current rules and cars with Rupert snaffling half of the races, to offer them back to be for $750 a year and the result has been I have not watched a race all year. First year in 15 that I have not gone to the Aus GP too.

So NO, I would not pay to watch live sports on Foxtel. Come up with a streamed alternative at a reasonable price and I would consider it though.

[goober]

Hadn't missed a Grand Prix since 1991, until this year.

[CJ]

I have it. Mostly for the sports. Mostly the football. You know, that game played using mostly the foot and an actual ball. Premiership mostly but Champions league and FA cup too. Then there's Wimbledon right now, during the day. Tons of motorsport including the BTCC, Formula E, GP2, MotoGP2 and 3. The F1 coverage includes all the practice sessions and a fair bit of related chit chat with Brundell and co. And the actual race is ad free. As are both halves of the "soccer" Then there's also the Six Nations Rugby, golf, cricket and so on. If you like your world wide sport, it's a must. It's the ultimate in reality TV!

[astroron]

Another deterrent is I don't want another antenna on my roof, I already have two:(
Cheers:thumbsup:

[CJ]

No Alan Jones either Ron. ;)

[Exfso]

Ron, I agree with your sentiments for sure, not sure where you are getting the $750 from, it is $50/month and another $10 if you want HD. My problem is I am an F1 addicted old fart and since Ch10 got out of it I have been going through withdrawal symptoms. I opted to get it only for the F1, although I must admit I like the Football coverage as well. Since I had the cancer, I don't drink any more, (never smoked),so I reckon I would waste it on F1. I reckon drinkers and smokers would spend more than $15 a week on their addictions.
At least the F1 now has all practice sessions live as well as Qualifying and the race, plus all the crud that the poms have on their F1 channel, some interesting stuff there for F1 tragics.;)

[astroron]

Peter, You obviously already have Foxtel.
The information re price came via the thread we had earlier this year when Foxtel took over the coverage.
Even your total comes to $600:00 a year,I don't know if the total includes other fees.
Ok Bernie makes more money but has reduced the amount of people watching F1
We are in danger of loosing the German and Italian grand Prix by the greed of Bernie and his company.
Those sterile stadiums tracks with very few people in the grandstands are killing F1 and the pricing out of people watching on TV will eventually be the demise of Bernie Ecclestone in the not too distant future.

[BeanerSA]

I fought it and fought it, but when F1 and V8SC went, I really felt I had no choice. They were pretty much the only things I watch on TV full stop! The coverage is excellent, but Murdoch can still go and **** himself, which I tell them everytime I do a customer engagement survey.

[Exfso]

Hi Ron, yes I purchased it after CH10 lost it. Only for the F1, as I said $15/wk is not a lot. A drinker and smoker would probably spend 10x that amount. Trust me I hate Foxtel with a passion, but the coverage in HD is really damn nice compared to standard definition. All the extra stuff we did not get when Ch10 had it is good as well.;)

[Neil]

I've had Foxtel for 16 years, watch a lot of sport(NRL,V8's, F1, Tennis, Golf, ect)I find the coverage and HD far superior to FTA which I watch rarely, perhaps the local news and NRL that's not on Foxtel, clear skies.:thumbsup:

[GeoffW1]

Haha,

Yes that is great fun. Vodafone got the same treatment when they made the error of asking me for feedback.

Cheers

[astroron]

They wont give a monkey's whether your happy or not,as long as they get your money.:sadeyes:
Cheers:thumbsup:

[Allan_L]

It is a service, and they charge a fee.
What is the problem with that?
Do you pay a fee for your internet access?
If it provides something you want, (content, audio/video quality, convenience {like pause record and scheduling} then you decide if it is good value or not.
I use the internet a lot, but I get more "entertainment" from Foxtel per month for around the same fee.

[ourkind]

Hey Ron I'm with you! There's no way I'm paying an extra cent to watch any sport, even as a die-hard F1 fan.

So here's an alternative Ron - I've been watching full races live via this site ... www.rojadirecta.me it works ;) and it's a whole lot better than making those greedy rich b@#$ any richer! :thumbsup:

[04Stefan07]

Totally agree. It's another service provided just like the internet. Same as a mobile phone!

[ZeroID]

Nope, never have, never will .. if they want to throw ads at me I'm not going to pay for the 'privilege'.

[julianh72]

I'm really missing the F1 now, but $60 per month ($720 per year) to watch the ten races that aren't on One / Ten is WAY too much for me. (I know you can get it for as "little" as $50 per month / $600 per year in SD, but I reckon once you've paid that much, you'd be a mug to not pay the extra $10 for HD.) Yes, there's no doubt that the Sky coverage on Foxtel is a LOT better than the One / Ten coverage, but at the end of the day, I'd settle for just the races in SD if I could get it for a reasonable price.

I'd sign up to a live streaming F1 subscription in a flash if it was a reasonable price. What's "reasonable"? Well, everyone has their own measure - for me, it's probably around $200 per year for a full season. I'm seriously not interested in the rest of the bundle that you have to take with Foxtel to get access to the Sports package, which is the only way to access F1 in Australia.

And F1 wants to know why TV audiences are falling away?!

(We're on ADSL2+, with a synch speed of "only" 12 Mbps, but it handles streaming HD TV services such as Netflix without any trouble.)

[The_bluester]

Completely correct, but it misses the point IMO.

Yes, Foxtel is a service, but it is one wanting to charge monopoly rents to access that service, and it is STILL using a decades old delivery model, one that no longer has the benefit of watching no ads. Given we can get everything else we ever would have watched on Foxtel for under $200 per year and watch it when we want not when they decide we can, I am not going to support the creaking old model of stitching up content monopolies so that you can then charge an arm and a leg for it by paying at least triple that amount so that I can watch content they have whisked away from free to air purely in order to make a profit on it. not to mention the careful packaging of heaps of dross in the packages with the good stuff just so they can sell advertising into "The voice Antarctica on the "Obscure and unwatchable content channel" because it has 100,000 subscribers, 3 of which actually watch it.


I am with Julian, if they created an F1 streaming service at around $200 per year and made it one worth having so HD, choose your camera feed at will, or just sit back and watch what the director thinks, stream, pause, rewind and retain access to past races for a reasonable period (Like perhaps keep an entire season available so you can watch live if you like but can also watch the whole lot later on) it would be a "Shut up and take my money" situation.

[scagman]

No, I'm totally against paying $50 a month for adds and repeats. Enough of them on FTA tv.
I haven't missed a race for 20-25yrs and was very p'd off when it was decided to go to foxtel.
Still haven't missed a race. Download the Hola extension/plugin for your browser and use the BBC's Iplayer. They sometimes have qualifying and practice sessions too. Streams well.
Sofar all the races have been shown live except 1 I think.


Cheers

[julianh72]

But the BBC only gets half of the F1 races live as well (although it's a different mixture to One / Ten http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/30704154 ), under a similar deal as we now get in Australia.

Personally, I refuse to sign up to Foxtel just to get my F1 fix, and I regularly write to formula1.com and respond to fan surveys etc to make sure they know WHY the fans are turning off. I don't expect Bernie to suddenly have a change of heart, but he can't last forever (can he?), and maybe the next generation of managers will see the sense of a direct subscription option for the real fans.

[04Stefan07]

It's actually $50 for the Sports combo which includes the base pack.

You do understand that paying extra for the sports channel doesn't just give you Formula 1. It gives you all the sports under the Sun. That's $50 per month to watch any sport you desire.

That includes 4-5 channels dedicated to the Formula 1 during a race. You can choose standard commentary stream, pure sound, onboard and telemetry.

[julianh72]

Yes, but I'm an F1 fan, not a Sports fan! (I'm not even interested in the V8 Supercars.)

Foxtel is good value if the content offered matches your viewing tastes; it doesn't make such good sense if you want to watch 2 hours every couple of weeks, which is what it would amount to for me.

As Bruce Springsteen says:
"57 Channels (And Nothin' On)"

[04Stefan07]

No worries.

You might need to find a live stream just for F1 online.

Think someone posted it in a reply earlier before.

[The_bluester]

Unfortunately, Foxtel did what Foxtel does and stitched the rights to half of this seasons races up for five years (While the Ch Ten contract had another year to run too, would it be any great surprise to find they pay some more next year and stitch up the lot and the only non pay TV option was delayed highlights?) so any new F1 rights holder is four and a half years away from being able to launch a live streaming service in Australia unless of course Foxtel allowed that in the contract, which I would find very unlikely.

[JB80]

For me I use filmon.com, they show most free to air UK channels live and between the races that are shown locally and the bbc I haven't missed a race yet unless you count having a snooze every now and then missing it. Plus there are no IP restrictions to slow the computer down and it has survived various legal challenges to still be operating legally for those that may have that concern.

I do agree with others though that were F1 to release a season pass subscription fee for a full on HD streaming experience then I would be in, my internet may not be able to cope though.

[Kal]

Pretty much sums up my sentiments esp regarding Rupert, except I am still fighting it.

Tip, if you know someone that has foxtel, they can watch it on up to 3 mobile devices such as pc's / tablets via Foxtel Go app... I get to watch F1 now on my pc without having to pay for it ;)