There’s no doubt that the Foxtel presentation of V8 Supercars is above and beyond anything this country has ever seen. In fact, it’s on par with NASCAR and Formula One, where every single on-track session is covered in minute detail, even those early-weekend practice sessions that can be about as exciting as watching paint dry.
The quality of Foxtel’s coverage isn’t in doubt – and I’m sure even those who are against the deal in principal can at least admit it’s pretty impressive – but, rather, the eyeballs tuning in to watch races.
Remember, the series took a major leap of faith in taking a large portion of the sport away from free to air television, giving it exclusively to Foxtel. Whilst Channel Ten broadcasts live races from Adelaide, Townsville, Sandown, Bathurst, the Gold Coast and the Sydney 500, the balance of the season – Symmons Plains, Barbagallo, Winton, Hidden Valley and Sydney Motorsports Park – can only be found on subscription television.
Now, we already know that Foxtel is available in only a fraction of homes that have televisions, and the series is well known to attract working-class types and also those who live in far-flung rural areas. Some folks can’t afford Foxtel and some, who may very well have the spare coin, simply don’t get connectivity.
I had a sinking feeling when the deal was announced that there would be a major drop-off in ratings, and despite low viewer numbers for Symmons Plains – potentially due to the Cricket World Cup Final going against the Sunday race – I was prepared to give things the benefit of the doubt and judge the ratings after last weekend’s event out west.
Well, they weren’t much better. Sunday’s lone race attracted 63,000 viewers. That was good enough for eleventh on the top twenty subscription television programs, well behind AFL’s Port Adelaide vs Adelaide clash (213,000), Guardians of the Galaxy movie (114,000) and, bizarrely, episodes of The Real Housewives of Melbourne (84,000) and equal with a decades-old Fawlty Towers (63,000).
The very fact that the AFL can rate so highly on Foxtel proves that there certainly is an audience for sport there. What does that mean for the V8 Supercars? Nothing good, that’s for certain.
The gap of 150,000 viewers is a giant one between AFL and the V8 races. Surely alarm bells are ringing in the V8SC bunker? If not with the series administrators, led by CEO James Warburton, then surely with sponsors? It’s hard enough source sponsors these days, but throw in the fact that the sport goes missing on FTA for large chunks of the year – Clipsal is in March, and the next live race on Channel Ten is in July, at Townsville – and it becomes exponentially harder. Four months is a long time to disappear from the national consciousness. It’s hard for even diehard fans to stay interested for that long without proper coverage.
The alternative for fans without access to Foxtel is to wait until 8:30pm on Saturday or Sunday night to watch an hour of highlights on One – or longer still if you don’t get the high definition channel. Replays and highlights might’ve been okay ten years ago, but with social media, and the volume of posts through all those platforms, including the V8 Supercar page itself, it’s now almost impossible to avoid having the results spoiled.
Add to that, an hour of highlights on free to air television really actually means about forty minutes when you include advertisements, and even less racing because of the intro and outro. So, you’re down to just over half an hour of highlights of races that, at a minimum, run for one lap over thirty minutes, when adjudged to be time-certain. Sunday’s race ran for nearly ninety minutes, and it was sliced and diced down to basically a third of that. I can understand why no one wants to turn that on.
The multi-channel (Go, 7Two, One, ABC2 etc.) ratings for Sunday were dominated by cartoons and movies on, and One’s broadcast of the Perth SuperSprint highlights failed to crack the top twenty. Like I said, why is anyone going to watch meagre highlights of a race that’s been over for at least four hours, and one in which the result – Will Davison’s impressive win for Erebus – is well known.
Seven Network personality Mark Beretta Tweeted on Tuesday night that the ratings for this year’s coverage of the Barbagallo round compared with numbers from last year saw Foxtel achieve just one tenth of the audience Seven garnered last year, despite the coverage being on 7Mate in some areas. Obviously Beretta has an agenda, but those are damning statistics nonetheless. The benefit of free to air coverage was demonstrated by the success of the Bathurst 12 Hour race earlier in the year, which delivered huge numbers for Seven.
I can’t wait to see how the series spins these numbers. That tactic of adding up all of the ratings for every single V8-related show – including magazine and panel shows – smacks of desperation. That they are resorting to such a ploy speaks volumes.
Having part of your round on free-to-air and part on subscription television each week obviously works for the AFL and NRL, because fans can access at least a few games each week for no cost, but if the V8 Supercar board believed fans without Foxtel would still tune into pared-down highlights, surely the numbers now put that notion to bed?
It was always a risk for the series to throw their lot in with subscription television, and early numbers, at least, suggest it was a mistake. Is a rebound possible? Certainly, but too many more rounds drawing numbers in and around 60,000 per race and sponsors are going to start worrying, if they already haven’t, particularly when you add in the large drop in attendance at both Symmons Plains and Barbagallo.
The fans have spoken, voting to stay away from the series, both at the racetrack and on television, and the groundswell of discontent is only getting stronger. You can’t help but feel that the series is approaching a precipice, with attendance and TV numbers down, and the prospect of an all-V8 format disappearing in a few years.
Whether it can pull back from the cliff is another question entirely.
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