F1 Fanatic

I keep getting questions from people about the cost of watching the dedicated F1 channel on Sky in 2012.

Since Sky announced it the cheapest ordinary subscription to the service appears to be £363 per year.

However I’ve had a lot of emails, tweets and comments from readers who have been confused by this article from the Daily Mail which claimed – incorrectly, as it turned out – that the channel could be made available for £10 per month, i.e. £120 per year. Let me stress that this deal does not exist.

In order to put the matter beyond doubt I put the question to Sky via their customer help feature, which confirmed the cheapest way to view the channel on your TV is £363 per year. I have pasted the transcript below.

As @MattB has pointed out it may be possible to get the channel for less if you’re happy to watch it on your computer.

Update: Virgin Media have confirmed they will have the Sky F1 channel, see here for more

Here’s the transcript of my chat with Sky. It looks like they were pushing me towards the dearer option to begin with – the Sky Sports package, costing around £600 per year – before describing the other deal for the channel.

Also note that Sky’s subscription prices are frozen until the end of August 2012.

Chat Information: Please wait for a Sky Advisor to respond.

Sky: You are welcome.

I hope this information proves useful for those weighing up the various price options for subscribing to Sky.

Almost every single post I have seen that you have made has pointed out how much it costs (posts referring to sky coverage). It’s not that expensive. If I can manage a £44p/m sky bill on a job that pays £12k a year, I’m pretty sure most other people can as well.

They should either take it or leave it and they should quit moaning litle little girls.

Depends on your priorities I guess. I’m lucky in a way as we already have Sky with the HD package. But if I’d have had to get Sports (~£240) to watch F1 then it would have been a toss up between watching each race live on TV or going to Silverstone for the British GP. I wouldn’t be able to afford both.

@cubejam I think it’s a very poor deal made worse by the confusing structure and Sky’s breathtaking cynicism.

I asked them about subscribing to one channel and they offered to sell me 240 of them. That’s downright insulting.

They force you to subscribe for 12 months when you only want nine. And they have the gall to keep referring to essential parts of your service (like the receiver box) as “free” when you’re paying £363 per year.

The circumstances of the arrangement with the BBC make it even worse. People are already getting half the races live and in HD for free (TV licence notwithstanding), but then have to pay £36.30 each for the other ten.

There will be people who say “but you get so much other stuff” – that’s besides the point. People don’t necessarily want the other stuff. If Sky ran a supermarket they’d be selling loaves of bread for £20 with 100 “free” tins of spam.

So I don’t agree with you – I think it’s a lousy deal and I can well understand why people are unhappy about it. Not least considering that there were other free-to-air broadcasters, such as Channel 4, interested in taking up the rights, but it appears to BBC’s decision to go straight to Sky left them out of the picture.

@BasCB thanks, I completely missed that!

OK, so lets assume that I am a Virgin HD customer, I can already get the Sky Sports pack through virgin at an increased cost (but dont), ignoring my current monthly (minimum) payment, will I be able to just buy the Skysports F1 channel?

Virgin haven’t mentioned it!

@cubejam 12k a year and you can still afford Sky? You still live with your parents, right?

I’d also like to mention that when I did ring to cancel my Sky subscription in July this year, they offered to make my subscription half price for three months in an attempt to make me stay.

So, with a bit of leg work (and depending on your circumstances), it does look like you might be able to get Sky cheaper and for the 9 months that F1 is aired.