Wasn't Canal+ involved in the early 2000s Ecclestone-TV-experiment? I recall seeing some Canal+ commercials with F1 cars in them, though perhaps that was only in the Benelux.
Anyway, an interesting move. I wonder which European countries now have F1 on (extra) pay TV? The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the French Republic are the three most recent ones, but I suppose there are more out there.
Do any Brits have information on how viewing figures changed in 2012?
There was an interesting piece on f1fanatic.co.uk on the impact of the UK Sky deal on TV viewership. Looking at the first 11 races of 2012, it concluded that viewing figures were significantly down on 2011. Adding together the average live viewership for the first 11 races in 2011 showed they were watched by 45.7m people,
an average of 4.15m per race. Over the same races in 2012 the corresponding totals were 24.15m viewers,
averaging 2.2m per race. For the five races which were shown live on both the BBC and Sky,
the average was 3.8m – much closer to 2011, but still
a fall of 9.5%.If the Sky/BBC share arrangement continues to its current end date of 2018 and future years follow much the same pattern, I don't think Bernie, the teams or their sponsors will be too worried. A less than 10% fall in viewership for the races shown on both channels is small beer and even the 47% fall for the Sky only races is much lower than some doom-mongers were predicting when the deal was first announced. However, if the BBC were to give up its half share of live races some sponsors might start complaining - especially the ones with products aimed at the domestic consumer.