Feckin Ecclestone....

Yep Mr Ecclestone agreed to the deal, no doubt the additional £9m his company will get from the partnership might have swayed it a little. Apparently he never forced the BBC to break their exclusive rights deal (they had that until end of 2013 season) though. They couldnt afford it so approached him with the Sky deal to make it work.

I started off by blaming Ecclestone but having read as much as I can about it, I think I'm starting to believe the BBC may be more to blame here than it first seems. They seem to be trying to portray the organisation as the innocent party in all of this by saying they couldnt afford it and this is the best outcome as at least some races stay free to air. If they'd have walked away they would have had penalty clauses but ALL races would be shown live on free to air, on another channel.

Funny how they are claiming poverty after having just spent £900m moving to Manchester (urr perhaps the Sport dept really should still be in London due to a little shindig going on there next year - apparently the expenses bills are going to be huge, but remember folks its a money saving scheme!).


Edited by chrisg - 02 Aug 11 at 8:46am

Good news for Sky HD subscribers.... clicky

Unfortunately, I think the prancing horse prancing off has a lot more to do with their cr*ppy results this year and willingness to spend way more than they'd be 'allowed' to by the gents agreement within FOTA than anything else... notice Red Bull weren't far behind either.  Now, IMO, I think this is all unfortunate because the smaller teams will just end up much further away from competitiveness (if such a word exists) as the bigger boys spend, spend, spend and they are spending all that dough on a much more developed platform to start with....