“The game is not worth the effort” for TF1

TF1 lost its match against Canal +, Be in Sport and M6 who were competing in the call for tenders to win the new contract offering the rights to broadcast the Grands Prix in France for the next three seasons. Canal + has already announced that it will broadcast the races on its encrypted channel and not on the D8 auxiliary antenna available on TNT as had been mentioned in previous months. TF1 abandons F1 after many years when it saw its audience drop to around 2,8 million viewers per Grand Prix.

Canal + adopted an aggressive strategy following the emergence of new competitors (in particular with Be in Sport which bought the rights to Ligue 1 and the Champions League) by investing no less than 29 million euros per season to acquire the rights to F1. At the moment when France is once again represented on the starting grids, France is moving to the pay channel for F1 like Great Britain last year. “We can no longer invest extravagant sums in sports rights without making them profitable”, Frédéric Ivernel, director of external communications and marketing for the TF1 group, explained to AFP. “We noticed that audiences were dropping. And it had never been a secret that acquisitions had to be made based on their profitability. We are disappointed for our viewers who loved watching F1, but we cannot invest extravagant sums if the game is not worth the effort. »