Foxtel has announced this morning a new “multi-year” rights deal for the Formula One World Championship and in doing so announcing the addition of new features to the IQ box for F1 Fans.
CEO of the Foxtel Group Patrick Delaney said the company was “Taking our relationship with F1 to a new level as a result of a new multi year rights extension”
Formula One CEO Stefano Domenicali said of the announcement “Foxtel is the best platform in Australia for Formula 1”
There’s a reason Foxtel has chased down these rights. Stan Sport, Amazon – heck even Apple are all circling for sports rights, so one of the biggest sports in the world remains a critical element of the Fox Sports and Kayo sports packages.
Patrick Delaney telling media at today’s announcement that Foxtel was aiming its rights deals at the “top tier” sports which seemed a very clear stab at the rights they’ve lost to other streamers like Stan.
Among the 2.4 million Foxtel subscribers F1 viewing grew 31% year on year, with Kayo Sport seeing an 87% increase in F1 year on year too.
But the real news is how Foxtel is looking to keep their Sports subscribers sticky with additional content. Delaney says “We’re going to go deeper with the integration of more f1 content”. This is being done by integrating the F1 TV app into the Foxtel IQ box for season 2023.
F1 TV has been hugely popular in many areas of the world, particularly where F1 doesn’t have a rights holder, allowing fans to pay for access to huge amounts of live streams and data in one app.
However in Australia it’s been unavailable due to our extensive rights coverage.
It’s yet to be seen how well integrated it will be, given that Kayo already offers a 3-4 stream live coverage option, for Foxtel to remain the premium product in Pay TV the F1 TV app integration will need to be comprehensive but if done well it will certainly take the coverage to an all-new level.
Delaney said today that the F1 TV app was exclusive to the Foxtel IQ box, but that the content available within the app would be available on Kayo.
The new app, and updates are a year away for fans, with the 2022 season already underway it’s a long wait for Foxtel fans, but the sport is locked in for the future.
