This is despite the fact that of the three races so far this season two have been broadcast live at ‘unfriendly’ European times. Unseasonably fine weather across Northern Europe over the weekend of the Bahrain GP had a negative effect on audiences in Germany, France and the UK. Qualifying continued to pull in strong audiences following last year’s trend, further proof of the acceptance and enjoyment of the current format.
In France, TF1’s audiences got off to a slow start at the Australian GP; the change in start time dictates that accurate comparisons can only be drawn from the 2005 event, on this basis audiences have in fact seen an increase. The live audience for the Malaysian GP drew an average 2.5 million French viewers for the third year in succession. Average share of viewing audience across all three race programmes has been in excess of 38 per cent. Despite the decreased audience for Bahrain, the race coverage still provided a 31 per cent audience share.
In Spain, year on year comparison for both average and peak audiences for – Tele5’s coverage show increases for all three of the races so far in 2007. Unsurprisingly the Bahrain GP yielded the highest live audience to date with an average of 5.2 million viewers (4.2 million - 2006), a peak of 6.7 million (5.6 million - 2006) which equated to an audience share of 57 per cent.
In Germany, as anticipated, Formula One audiences have declined a little from last year. However, 2006 was a particularly strong year for Formula One in Germany and when 2005 figures are taken into consideration the apparent decline is not so pronounced. RTL’s Malaysian race coverage drew the top audience of all programmes of the day, out scoring any programming in peak evening prime time. RTL’s F1 related programming accounted for 8 of the day’s 10 largest audiences for sport.
The Bahrain GP suffered as a consequence of the exceptionally fine weather in Germany, the Sunday afternoon television viewing population across all channels was less than 13 million compared to a total of 20 million during the Sunday afternoon of the 2006 Bahrain race. Therefore whilst the actual numbers clearly decreased the share remained almost constant.
In reality, if we consider the market share figures for all three races and compare them with last year, the drop was 10% per cent for the first 2 events and only 2 per cent for Bahrain, notwithstanding the earlier start time in Australia and absence of Michael Schumacher.
In the UK, the 2007 Season has been gathering momentum since the opening round as viewers begin to recognise the true potential of Lewis Hamilton. Audiences for the live coverage of the Malaysian Grand prix leaped 27 per cent from 2006. Although the numbers were down slightly for Bahrain due to the fine weather an audience share of 39 per cent was 8 per cent higher than the 2006 share. The evening highlights program attracted one million viewers, in 2006 this program was watched by 400,000 people.
-In Italy, year on year increases in audience size have become a regular feature of Rai’s coverage. 2007 has been no exception as each race this year has achieved more viewers than its 2006 counterpart. The Australian Grand Prix attracted an unprecedented 72 per cent share in live audience. For the Malaysian GP the audience share was 61 per cent equating to 5.8 million viewers, a million more viewers than 2006. For Bahrain 11.1 million viewers watched Ferrari take a second win of the season, this represents a larger audience than for any event in 2006 excluding the season finale in Brazil.
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