MotoGP 2014 - BT Sport

[FourWheelDrift]

rubystone said:

I tuned into Eurosport the other day and don't think that was Toby's voice I heard...

Steve Day replaced Toby when he was off doing the X-Games. Might have been that, or you caught a guest in the box?

[pozi]

neelyp said:

When ESPN gets re-branded as BT sport Virgin Meedja customers with the XL package may still get it (hopefully) included. Whether this will include Moto GP is anyones guess.
If it's not they can ram it, I don't find it exciting enough to splash out anymore for.

You will lose ESPN on 31st July when the other BT Sport channels launch so you can cross that option off your list.

[Charger500]

graphene said:

I could be wrong.. but I believe a Steve Day has been standing in for Toby on occasion.

Does Toby M still do BTCC? I seem to remember last year he was missing from MotoGP when there was a clash with BTCC...

I was just venting about how crap it is the BBC screw up the live coverage on Eurosport by nicking the live rights for race day and now this... So is that it for Toby and Jules and MotoGP on Eurosports? What a dam shame... best commentators, any sport, PERIOD!

[sprinter1050]

When i think about it, one of the endearing qualities about the style of Moody, Ryder & to a lesser degree Spalding, is that it's a bit like being sat alongside them, drink in hand, on a 3/4 seater sofa in a pub watching the race on telly.

Which is more or less what I'm doing usually :

[FourWheelDrift]

Charger500 said:

Does Toby M still do BTCC? I seem to remember last year he was missing from MotoGP when there was a clash with BTCC...

Nope went back full time to MotoGP for this year and with ITV also losing Ben Edwards to the BBC ITV now have David Addison, a very recognisable voice who's done all sorts of motorsports commentary for many years.

[acme]

Gutted, absolutely gutted. I've been avidly following Moto GP for a decade, Steve & Charlie have made a great team, and Matt Roberts has continued where Suzie left off.

Bo**ox.

[Swervin_Mervin]

I too am gutted, as is the wife. We got into it because it was on the BBC and we've never had Sky/Virgin (we probably won't ever either). We've even now been to a couple of events including the infamous Estoril in 2009 on our honeymoon!

I really do think it will backfire on them as well. Despite being available free to air now for 10yrs I bet the viewing figures ahve never really been that high compared to other sports on terrestrial TV. So shifting it to a subscription platform at a cost of £150 a year sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. And you'd imagine that if viewing figures drop, so might attendance figures to some degree.

The BTSport website also seems to suggest that it might not even be available on Virgin which is odd.

Is it possible to get subscription services on Freesat? The site seems to imply that if you have a decoder and dish you can pay for the service.

[y2blade]

[markcoznottz]

Ironic because the sponsers love free to air, but dorna see short term $$$. I say be careful mototsports organisers we fans are fickle, god only knows what casual viewers think. Apparently in F1 and Motogp the sponsers want "eyeballs' so prefer free to air presenters faffing around thier riders on grid. The sponsers such as monster are not motorbike specific, who do you think they want seeing thier brand, bbc2 or an obscure sky channel.

[dm46]

Personally I love the bbc coverage, I find it entertaining. But then again I do like Clarkson who doesn't appear very popular on Ph.

[Rich_W]

I couldn't bare to wtch the races on BBC because of the fkwits doing the commentary. But what I;ve seen of Matt Roberte he looks like he knows what he's doing so he could percievably front the BT Coverage and it would be OK.

Inevitably watched on Eurosport. Toby's starting to grate a little bit. Trying too hard sometimes. Steve Day was excellent recently with Ryder. And Spalding manages to make it understandable for the vast majority. Which is also great. Missed Randy too when he left Eurosport

So ideal world

Roberts - Presenting
Day/Ryder - Commentators
Toby interviews and Randy roving in the pits (fills the ex rider quota)
Spalding doing the tech stuff.

However, all this is irrelevant if BT don't do a deal with Virgin. We "could" pay for SkyF1 on VM but it wouldn't be HD coverage, which defeats the point IMO. And BT need to do a sensible deal with VM, not an extra £20 p/month. I'm optimistic from the ESPN link though. We get that free on the XL.

As alluded to above, SkyF1 hasn't been the massive success they hoped. Most people still watch on BBC (IIRC 700K v 3m-ish) Dorna going down this route is probably a mistake. But if it all comse crashing down in 2 years, would BBC/Eurosport want to show it if no one in the UK watches it?

[Dare2Fail]

markcoznottz said:

Ironic because the sponsers love free to air, but dorna see short term $$$. I say be careful mototsports organisers we fans are fickle, god only knows what casual viewers think. Apparently in F1 and Motogp the sponsers want "eyeballs' so prefer free to air presenters faffing around thier riders on grid. The sponsers such as monster are not motorbike specific, who do you think they want seeing thier brand, bbc2 or an obscure sky channel.

True, but there are two points that people frequently forget:-

1. The MotoGP grid isn't exactly over flowing with British sponsors, which makes it much easier for DORNA to sell the rights to a pay per view channel.
2. I suspect that large multi national companies like Monster couldn't give a toss what channel it is broadcast on in the uk. At the end of the day we are a pretty small island.

My understanding is that in the US if you want to watch MotoGP it is PPV on Speed (I think). Despite this large companies like Monster and Red Bull are quite happy to pay big money in sponsorship deals. If PPV isnt deemed to be a big problem for sponsors in a country as huge as the US what makes you think that they care if the UK goes the same route?

[defblade]

Sad.

I'm not paying Sky, BT or any other st bag a penny for extra telly. Or changing my ISP, I'm very happy with Plusnet, have been for years (make me your referer too and I'll be even happier ).

And I can't be bothered to go looking for streaming (low connection speed anyway a lot of the time as I'm out in deepest Wales) as I'm just not that bothered and anyway I don't like watching stuff on my PC.. the chair's not comfy for that

So, bye-bye MotoGP.

I was never worried about live - I'm too busy having a life in the day - but settling down in the evening to find a bit of racing on the Hummy was always nice.

[hairyben]

Dare2Fail said:

True, but there are two points that people frequently forget:-

1. The MotoGP grid isn't exactly over flowing with British sponsors, which makes it much easier for DORNA to sell the rights to a pay per view channel.
2. I suspect that large multi national companies like Monster couldn't give a toss what channel it is broadcast on in the uk. At the end of the day we are a pretty small island.

My understanding is that in the US if you want to watch MotoGP it is PPV on Speed (I think). Despite this large companies like Monster and Red Bull are quite happy to pay big money in sponsorship deals. If PPV isnt deemed to be a big problem for sponsors in a country as huge as the US what makes you think that they care if the UK goes the same route?

Americans are big on american based "world" series (snicker). Also cable TV is the norm in middle class households.

I think this will fail pretty soon. Can't see BT getting the numbers. And if I'm wrong Murdoch will kill it off.

But if I'm wrong maybe it's time to look at the alternative options, had a motorized dish and d2mac decoder years ago... whats the modern equivalent?

[Dare2Fail]

I agree that the viewing figures are going to take a big hit from this. That said, BT Sport's main draw is always going to be its football coverage, much in the same way as ESPN's main draw was football. Does anyone know what sort of viewing figures ESPN used to get as I imagine that the majority of ESPN subscribers will continue with ESPN? If there is a lot of them then your 'casual' MotoGP audience will still exist as guys and gals who have the subscription for football may find that they enjoy watching a bit of two wheeled racing on a Sunday morning.

If BT were hinging their success on MotoGP then I'd be really worried about this deal, but the reality is that MotoGP will be small potatoes compared to football. I only hope that doesn't mean that the bikes don't get second rate coverage anytime some footballers want to run around an oversized lawn.

[pozi]

Dare2Fail said:

I agree that the viewing figures are going to take a big hit from this. That said, BT Sport's main draw is always going to be its football coverage, much in the same way as ESPN's main draw was football. Does anyone know what sort of viewing figures ESPN used to get as I imagine that the majority of ESPN subscribers will continue with ESPN? If there is a lot of them then your 'casual' MotoGP audience will still exist as guys and gals who have the subscription for football may find that they enjoy watching a bit of two wheeled racing on a Sunday morning.

If BT were hinging their success on MotoGP then I'd be really worried about this deal, but the reality is that MotoGP will be small potatoes compared to football. I only hope that doesn't mean that the bikes don't get second rate coverage anytime some footballers want to run around an oversized lawn.

I mentioned this previously, any ESPN subscribers will loose the channel on 31st of July, BT now own it so if you want ESPN you need to buy the BT Sport package or have a broadband connection with them.

BT will have three channels (BT Sport 1,2 and ESPN) all broadcasting 24 hours a day so there is no excuse for not having sufficient TV hours to provide decent coverage. Fingers crossed anyway.

[anarki]

Yoda. said:

As I see it, I already pay a TV licence at...what £140 a year. Yeah, yeah some of us moan about that but personally I'm relatively resigned to the fact that we have to pay it. besides i quite like Radio 2 nowadays

On top of that I pay Sky over £20 a month in order to be able to watch Eurosport (similar to Macdeb I guess). Oh, I've looked hard enough and no...Europsort isn't gettable (at least AFAIK in the UK) on Freeview or Freesat. If it were I'd have told Murdoch to sling his hook long ago. I can't use the people's champion, Branson's cable company as he doesn't (I imagine understandably) deem it worth the investment of running 20 miles of strands out to my vicinity.
So what does that leave me with...BT Vision. But my ISP isn't BT, consequently as I understand I would then have to pay £15 to be able to watch MotoGp via Sky...making my monthly TV package over £35 a month just to watch it for 9 months of the year And I rapidly lose interest in all the chatter & inter-race bullst after about round two. That's a bad deal as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, I could switch to BT as an ISP to 'save' myself the £15...but I don't particularly want to do that as they're more expensive (just) than the current rogues I have the misfortune of having to be with in order to look at donkey porn instead of embarrassing myself at the newsagents once a week!

I believe that BT Vision isn't quite as good as it could be either. The BT guy said a few months ago when he came round to sort of the broken BT cable down the road that the problem is that for some areas they aren't using nice new shiny wires like Virgin do. Some of their infrastructure is still using copper & aluminium cables form the 1980's era which aren't exactly renowned for being high speed TV.

So if all of this is actually right I feel a little fked over to be frank if I want to watch MotoGp in 2014. I don't really, not that much!
Still, perhaps Sky will add BT Vision MotoGp on as another 'package' to what I already have and be able to charge me more. I might go for that...we'll see what happens.

You don't need a licence to listen to Radio in the UK, a radio licence was abolished on Feb 1st 1971.

In my opinion (which will no doubt be divided) the BBC should be scraped completely and I begrudge paying a TV licence as I don't watch much content from the BBC. If I could tell virgin media to block all BBC content to my TIVO box I would and then cancel my TV licence. I can't stand their very left wing agenda they portray on a lot of their programs. Question time is a great example of this.

[jimbo2112]

So, as keen motorsport viewers we have been dealt another blow. If we want to watch MotoGP and F1, like a lot of us do, we now need $ky and BT?

I'm currently working on Freesat (as I can't see the point in paying for free TV bolstered by 50 channels of nonsense I will never, ever watch), plus, paying for 1 day passes on $ky when there is no live BBC F1 coverage, and getting MotoGP free (I love the presenters they have right now, which is another massive shame).

What's the fix for this anyone? What's the cheapest way to get F1 and MotoGP?

[Dare2Fail]

pozi said:

Dare2Fail said:

I agree that the viewing figures are going to take a big hit from this. That said, BT Sport's main draw is always going to be its football coverage, much in the same way as ESPN's main draw was football. Does anyone know what sort of viewing figures ESPN used to get as I imagine that the majority of ESPN subscribers will continue with ESPN?

I mentioned this previously, any ESPN subscribers will loose the channel on 31st of July, BT now own it so if you want ESPN you need to buy the BT Sport package or have a broadband connection with them.
.

Clearly I was half asleep when typing as I meant to say '....ESPN subscribers will continue with BT Sport?'.

[egor110]

jimbo2112 said:

So, as keen motorsport viewers we have been dealt another blow. If we want to watch MotoGP and F1, like a lot of us do, we now need $ky and BT?

I'm currently working on Freesat (as I can't see the point in paying for free TV bolstered by 50 channels of nonsense I will never, ever watch), plus, paying for 1 day passes on $ky when there is no live BBC F1 coverage, and getting MotoGP free (I love the presenters they have right now, which is another massive shame).

What's the fix for this anyone? What's the cheapest way to get F1 and MotoGP?

I hear there are moody websites that stream sky channels!