A brand new Formula 1 season will be flagged off at the Bahrain International Circuit on Sunday, with the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. Many Indian fans of the sport, though, will not be following that familiar ritual of switching on their television in time for the race.
For the first time in more than three decades, Formula 1 will not be telecast by a mainstream media entity in India. This comes after Disney Star, who held both television and streaming rights until last year, and Formula 1 failed to reach an agreement over the rights. The only option for Indian fans to watch the sport will be subscribing to Formula 1’s in-house streaming app F1 TV. However, with an annual subscription priced at `2499, it may not fall within the budget of many fans. The pricing makes F1 TV one of the costliest OTT platforms in India without the diversity in content that other platforms carry.
For a lot of fans, Formula 1 no longer being on Indian television marks the end of an era. Karun Chandhok, one of only two Indians to race in F1 is one of them. “It’s a shame to hear that F1 won’t be on any of the main linear TV channels in India this year,” he said. “Obviously, it will be available on F1 TV. I remember the first race which was telecast live in India, which was the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix. It was on Prime Sports, which later became Star Sports. It’s been a long time now that F1 has been there.” Karun, who is now part of the Sky Sports F1 live coverage team, also has another reason to be disappointed. “For me personally, this also means that my commentary won’t be going to Indian audiences, which is disappointing.”
Interestingly, Formula 1 is keen to emphasize that rather than there not being broadcaster interest, this was a strategic decision keeping in mind the valuation of the broadcasting rights. “Our previous agreement with Star expired at the end of last season,” Ian Holmes, F1’s Director of Media Rights and Content Creation told this daily over email. “This agreement was part of a broader agreement we had with Fox in Asia. Fox closed down, but we extended with Star in India for the duration of the Fox contract which came to an end last year.”
“We looked at the more traditional channels and platforms. Star was one of them. We had discussions with Zee and one or two others too. I want to be candid about this – we felt that the valuation of many of those parties placed on our property wasn’t similar to what we felt it was worth,” he said.
Holmes said that the previous contract ending presented them with an opportunity to launch F1 TV in India and that reception to it had been better than what they anticipated. “We were always keen to see which Asian territories we could launch F1 TV in,” he said. “Under the old Fox/Star contract we couldn’t do that. So when the agreement ended an opportunity came up for us to launch it. We don’t share numbers, but we did a lot of research in the market before launch to understand what we could expect, and I can say we are ahead of our expectations in terms of subscribers.”