News that viewer numbers for Channel 4's highlights coverage of the Bahrain Grand Prix showed a drop of 44% on 2018, is followed by the revelation that audience numbers for the subsequent Chinese Grand Prix were down a further 13.2%.
This year, courtesy of the deal Sky enjoys with F1, Channel 4 is reduced to just one live race as part of its free-to-air deal, the British Grand Prix, the remaining 20 events being shown in a highlights show several hours after the race has ended.
As previously reported, Britain is one of the few countries that makes accurate viewing figures available to the public, courtesy of the highly-respected Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), whose data is the official guide when British networks are selling advertising spots.
Since it takes over a week for BARB to collate its data, the figures for the Chinese Grand Prix - the much-celebrated 1,000th race in the sport's history - only became available just before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend.
BARB's figures state that 1,410,100 viewers watched the broadcast on their TVs, while 19,959 tuned in on a PC or laptop, 5,236 watched it on a tablet and 4,086 used a smartphone.
This gives a total of 1,439,381 which is a drop of 13.2% on the 1,658,137 who watched the Bahrain race and 30.1% down on viewer numbers for the 2018 event in Shanghai.
In an age when series like Game of Thrones are broadcast simultaneously globally, and others are released as box sets so that fans can binge, the days when fans tune into a highlights show hours after an event were already numbered.
Add in the fact that, courtesy of social media, the results and major incidents are widely available almost as they happen, and Channel 4 was always on a hiding to nothing, a situation not helped by Mercedes taking 1-2s in the first four races and openly calling on Ferrari to raise its game.
Another factor in terms of the Chinese Grand Prix is that while the Bahrain highlights show was at peak evening viewing time, the Shanghai highlights were shown in the middle of the afternoon... when it was up against Tiger Woods resurgence in The Masters.
Indeed, in terms of viewer numbers, Forbes reveals that the Chinese Grand Prix highlights show was beaten by the likes of Married at first sight, a show about legal marriage with a complete stranger, and Gogglebox.
In fact, this year's audience figures for the Shanghai race marked Channel 4's lowest for the event since the broadcaster began covering F1 in 2016. That same year, 1.8 million tuned in, with a peak of 2.1 million in 2018, dropping this year to 1.4 million.
All of which flies in the face of F1's global research director Matt Roberts claim in December that the free-to-air viewer numbers would increase.
“Channel 4 will have the highlights next year and we have worked with them to ensure they show the races in a favourable prime time slot,” he said. “We estimate that we will actually have more viewers next year in the UK (thanks to this prime time slot) than we had this year.”
With the much-hyped Azerbaijan Grand Prix not living up to expectations and Mercedes scoring another 1-2, it is certain that the fall in viewer numbers will continue, which will surely have a bearing when Channel 4 comes to deciding whether to continue with its contract with F1 which ends this year.
With the BBC and ITV having turned their backs on live coverage of F1, it is highly doubtful that either would be interested in a highlights package, especially when they view the numbers Channel 4 is pulling in.
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