Apple<\/a> hopes to enter other markets after securing a five-year U.S. streaming deal to show Formula One races on Apple TV. Yet differing media rights cycles may act as a brake on the $4.37-trillion tech company\u2019s global ambitions.<\/p>\nThe Liberty Media-owned single seater is \u200ca popular live sports championship amongst fans, streaming services and traditional broadcasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a buy on F1. I think you can really see \u200cthat the sport is exploding in popularity. I think it’s gaining ground even in some of the more mature markets like Europe and the U.S. has really gained ground,\u201d said Matthew Harrigan, an equity \u200bresearch analyst for Benchmark Company.<\/p>\n
Bernstein, a research and brokerage firm, estimated that F1\u2019s media rights would be a key revenue driver in 2026, reaching between $90 million and $110 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cLive sports are such a valuable asset to have in terms of a TV or a streaming contract\u2026 And so when you’re able to find one of these relatively smaller and quickly rising ones, there’s going to be a lot of competition,\u201d Morningstar\u2019s Senior Equity Analyst William Kerwin told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Comcast-owned Sky agreed to extend its F1 media rights deal to 2034 in \u200cthe U.K. and 2032 in Italy at a premium \u2060price of one billion pounds ($1.34 billion), according to industry sources, ahead of its original 2029 expiration year in the U.K.<\/p>\n
The extension follows positive first-quarter results for F1 this year, achieving $617 million in revenue, a 53% increase on last year, despite the cancellation of the \u2060Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races in April.<\/p>\n
Conversely, analysts assert that Sky, F1\u2019s exclusive U.K. broadcaster since 2019, renewed their deal from a position of caution rather than strength.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that Sky felt vulnerable there\u2026 Sky knew that the U.K. was a very attractive market for Apple,\u201d Francois Godard, an independent analyst, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Godard also said that after the U.S., the U.K. \u200bwas \u200bthe next top market in Europe given it had \u201cmore e-ecommerce, more subscriptions to online newspapers, \u200bmore subscriptions to video services\u201d.<\/p>\n
The current incumbents in Europe have varying \u200cF1 media rights cycles: French broadcaster Canal+’s deal ends in 2029, while sports streaming platform DAZN has an exclusive agreement to broadcast Grands Prix in Spain until the end of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Apple truly does want to make this kind of a more global push, they’re going to do it region by region\u2026 and wait until these deals expire just to be able to try and compete for them,\u201d Kerwin said.<\/p>\n
Apple\u2019s next best bet in Europe might be the home of past world champions such as Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Apple wants to deploy in one other market, I would look at Germany. Big market, rich, and \u200ca big Formula One constituency. And the pay-TV market is in flux after the merger \u200bbetween Sky and RTL,\u201d Godard said.<\/p>\n
European broadcaster RTL received EU approval to acquire pay-TV Sky Deutschland, which \u200bhad F1 media rights till 2027.<\/p>\n
Traditional broadcasters such as Canal+, which has \u200bno domestic rights to France\u2019s top soccer division Ligue 1, and RTL would feel pre-empted to warn off a potential threat \u200cfrom Apple by emulating Sky.<\/p>\n
The iPhone maker, however, could look beyond \u200bEuropean territories if the classic markets are \u200bunavailable.<\/p>\n
\u201cEast Asia [and] certainly Africa, Apple can do things there\u2026 there’s much more upside potential there, both on viewing and in terms of Apple sales,\u201d said Harrigan.<\/p>\n
Yet an entry into a non-U.S. market does not guarantee success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a risk because not a lot of people already have it [Apple TV]. You might \u200blose viewership if you were to adopt an exclusive \u200cdeal for a service that people don’t want to pay for in addition,\u201d William said, noting that Apple TV was predominately a U.S. \u200bsubscriber base.<\/p>\n
Apple TV offers new and current subscribers a chance to switch commentary feeds during races: from F1 TV to U.K.’s Sky Sports \u200bbroadcasting team.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7459 pounds)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Streisand Neto; Editing by Alan Baldwin and Clare Fallon)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Streisand Neto LONDON, May 19 (Reuters) – Apple hopes to enter other markets after securing a five-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[1572,15915,49,48,578,113412,576,577,40763,249974,82,249975],"class_list":["post-681012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-apple","tag-apple-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-f1-tv","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-media-rights","tag-sky-deutschland","tag-sports","tag-traditional-broadcasters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}