Eurosport has signed a deal with Formula One Management (FOM) to secure the exclusive TV and digital rights to the FIA Formula One World Championship in Portugal from 2016 to 2018.
The deal covers all races, qualifying and practice sessions of the motorsports event for the next three seasons. Eurosport will have access to multiple live feeds including coverage from cameras mounted on cars and from helicopters to enable the channel to broadcast the action from different perspectives and angles for both TV and online viewers.
“F1 is one of the biggest sporting brands and the biggest event in the motorsport calendar,” said Peter Hutton, chief executive officer, Eurosport. “Securing these exclusive rights in Portugal further demonstrates our strategy to acquire key properties on a local as well as a pan-regional level, along with our commitment to put the greatest events, and capture the best sporting moments, on Eurosport. This is already proving successful and we are seeing double digit audience growth across Europe.”
“There are few sports with such a great history of world class on-air storytelling and production as F1 and we look forward to building on that heritage to offer a premium viewing experience to fans in Portugal. This is just part of a remarkable year for Eurosport in which investment in production has helped deliver impressive and record breaking ratings for flagship events in 2015 such as the French Open, US Open, Tour de France, MotoGP and Le Mans 24 Hours.” added Hutton.
Eurosport already offers motorsports including the MotoGP, Le Mans 24 Hours, the FIA WTCC, the World Superbike Championships and the recently signed FIA Formula E Championship. These competitions are amongst the most popular on Eurosport; the 2015 edition of Le Mans 24 Hours attracted 16.2 million European viewers to the channel, while the average live audience of the channel has been multiplied by three in Germany and by four in the Netherlands during MotoGP races this season.
Since the beginning of the year, Eurosport’s average audience has seen double digit rating increases in several key markets across Europe including an increase of 37 per cent in Italy, 25 per cent in Sweden, 19 per cent in the UK, 18 per cent in the Netherlands and 15 per cent in Germany.
The provisional calendar of the 2016 FIA Formula One World Championship includes a record of 21 races starting on 3 April in Australia and finishing on 27 November in Abu Dhabi.
