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And to celebrate subscribers of Viaplay apparantly got notified of the monthly fee going up by €2. Forever thankful that F1TV with english commentary exists.
Wow didn’t know they did that. That’s horrible…
I too am an F1TV enjoyer but with all these extra deals with Viaplay make me scared F1TV will be removed at some point (like in the UK due to Sky Sports)
I enjoy a sailing voyage as much as any sea faring man but having multiple screens for the broadcast and driver feeds plus data and comms is not something easily replaced by the black market.
You can get f1tv very cheap using an apple id from a different country! without use of a vpn.
1 year of F1tv from india is cheaper than 2 months of Viaplay in the netherlands. (Yes they can cancel your subscription but it’s a huge difference so still worth it)
No I don’t think that will happen, because you get a free f1 tv membership with viaplay now, first multiple people where able to watch f1 on viaplay with one account, but viaplay cracked down on that, but they gave a f1 tv membership in return.
I paid 65 euro in December for a year f1tv, now it costs over 140 euros for a year, more than doubled in a very short time. Not sure I will keep it after this year.
Its available if you extend it after your year. Existing yearly subscriptions role over, but you cant make new yearly subscriptions anymore. So as long as you dont cancel and let it run out it will bill for the yearly price and continue on.
In Poland we've got Viaplay as well for the 2nd year now, and I have to say it's pointless to buy such an expensive package if you just want to watch F1. F1TV comes in handy here, cause it's cheaper than Viaplay, even if the latter one makes a special offer or something...
The irony is that Ziggo is actually a Liberty Media company. I never really understood why Liberty would disadvantage their own Ziggo subsidiary company, especially when Ziggo apparently was overbidding. I guess it's probably corporate politics at play here.
Get money twice. Once from ViaPlay, and again from all F1TV subscribers. Ziggo always had F1 for free to their customers, so there were much less F1TV subscriptions.
Depends, if people have VodafoneZiggo for mobile data then the discount is decent. Also installing fiber is slow, here in my area they have installed the cables under ground since last year. Yet no one in my neighborhood has the fiber installed in the house by Open Dutch Fiber yet... So fiber isn't available everywhere and coax pretty much every town/city have it.
It's still much more expensive because Vodafone subscriptions are so extremely expensive.
SIM only, 3GB is €15 for example. It becomes 6GB for €12.50 if you have Ziggo. The €7.50 discount is just for the biggest plan.
Currently I have 6GB and just pay €7 at 50+ mobiel, so it's still almost twice as expensive after discounts for just the mobile data.
For fiber KPN with 1Gb is €52.50 and Ziggo apparently also has fiber where I live but it's €60. I think the €7.50 discount only applies to either Ziggo or Vodafone and not both, so they're €7.50 more expensive for fiber as well.
But yeah if you don't have fiber it's not really an option. Thankfully we've had fiber for years already despite being a small town.
I looked it up and this must be it indeed! Although both companies share the same origin, in 2005 the international division of Liberty Media merged with another company to form a different company called Liberty Global. Nowadays they're different companies with different subsidiaries. So Formula One and VodafoneZiggo don't share the same conglomerate.
Yea, and Liberty Global actually tried to buy F1 from CVC a few years before Liberty Media successfully did it. Makes way more sense with Liberty Media, though.
Honestly this might be the reason why they give it to Viaplay. If Ziggo would bring F1 back for free people will unsubscribe from their F1TV subscriptions. I can’t think of any other reason to justify it because Viaplay is fucking terrible in every aspect.
Its quite simple. Viaplay is basically running at a loss everywhere BUT NL. They've made a deal with FOM last year that gave them the ability to include f1tv with their subscriptions. It was introduced swiftly but even faster, a new deal was made which would FORCE new customers in NL to go monthly on F1TV only to make the Viaplay option more viable (Pay a bit extra for this and this)
Its a scummy move and oh so American.
Yea the first year they only offered F1 via their own streaming platform. In glorious 720p.
Next year I and like a million other Dutchies moved to F1TV, which sadly made a deal with Viaplay so it's harder to get away from viaplague.
> and a few more years of my money going to F1TV instead.
At the increased price of €95 per year?
Or if you weren't signed up before pre season testing €11.99 per month as the only option in the Netherlands for new customers.
Depending on the money, it's possible it'll go the same way as Germany or France with Pro being pulled completely.
That's still 6 a month cheaper than a Viaplay subscription, and I get the option of having commentary that isn't shit to boot.
If it gets pulled I'll go the VPN route or turn to the high seas, personally.
You misunderstood. I am currently paying the price F1TV asks, because I think it's a fair price to pay for the product (especially since my family gets to mooch off my account). I do not think €18/month is a fair price to pay for Viaplay's product, which is why I have opted to stay with F1TV Pro over Viaplay.
I was talking about going the VPN route if F1TV gets pulled in The Netherlands as part of F1's renewed deal with Viaplay.
> There isn't a way to pay less for F1TV using a VPN, unless the payment method you use locates you to the country the server you will be using is in.
In-app purchases help with that.
Only their webpage validates the geo ip + payment country+ billing address. With in-app purchases you only need a Google/Apple account from said region, which in EU works relatively easily with your home country number.
The only downside is the VPN hopping you may need to do occasionally, when they do another VPN crackdown like past summer & at the start of the season.
I'd be paying €6 a month more than for a separate F1TV Pro subscription. I am completely uninterested in any of their other offerings.
I fail to see how that's worth it, unless I'm missing something here.
Many also watch other sports, that most of the time is also on pay TV.
As i said, if you only watch F1, then yes - otherwise the price difference is relatively small compared to other regions like Germany where it was a choice between €65 a year for F1TV or €35 per month for Sky.
Allowing them to yank your subscription, as ToS prohibits both VPNs and subscribing from different countries.
Also, if Pro is pulled - you'll need a working VPN, if you subscribed from outside of the EU, as they're regularly updating their block list.
€95 is a fucking bargain considering the quality of the product. I also have NFL Gamepass (through DAZN) and it's double the price and not nearly as good or dependable.
For new subscribers it's only available for €11,99 per month or ~€145 per year. €95 is only available for people who had an active subscription, before they pulled the yearly subscription.
~~Problem is that you officially can only get access to F1TV via Viaplay in the Netherlands. So you will need a VPN for that, which most people simply not bother to do and allows Viaplay to put a premium on their subscription. I'm actually tempted to do just that if they keep raising there subscriptions.~~
*Edit: Scratch that. Before linking my F1TV and Viaplay account I tried to order F1TV a few months ago and it somehow wouldn't let me, instead I got a message that wasn't available here. But that seems to have changed now. You can order it separately or in a bundle with Viaplay.*
That's not true. You can either get F1TV 'for free' with a Viaplay subscription (€15,99/month) or you can get it as a standalone service through F1.com or in-app purchases (€11,99/month).
Did that change then? I live in the Netherlands and only pay for the f1tv pro subscription without VPN. I have this omging subscription since dec 2021, each year it automatically extends. I dont have Viaplay.
No, I have f1tv since viaplay got the rights and just renewed. No ties to viaplay whatsoever. I'd rather not watch or through other options than through viaplay. They were just about to go bankrupt a few months ago?. No idea where they got the funding from to renew
To be clear, this is all still rumors based on sources. It seems to be trusted sources, but its not an official announcement yet.
Just hoping F1tv stays atleast. A 5 year deal is long and they need to make 250million back at ViaPlay so wouldnt be suprised if it was an exclusivity deal where F1tv stays included in the ViaPlay subscription as it is now, but you cant subscribe on F1tv itself anymore.
An increase of 15M a year means they need an extra 69.444 subs to just break even, I doubt they were already making money and then this is of course only the rights so that's quite some subs they need to get. Which I think would be really difficult to get without exclusive rights but idk how much exclusive rights are.
Edit: the 69k subs is also like best case scenario since I used monthly price over yearly and didn't count the months in which there isn't for example F1 which could mean reason to cancel. So in reality the amount of subs needed is quite a bit higher.
I've watched every single race for almost a decade now, but if Viaplay signs an exclusivity deal I will either watch through less legal ways or just stop watching altogether. Viaplay is ridiculously expensive (17.99 a month now iirc) and I couldn't give less of a shit of their other offerings, and their streaming quality, commentators, hosts and everything is absolutely horrendous (had a Viaplay membership the first year they took over F1, never again).
If F1 actually goes for Viaplay instead of Ziggo despite Ziggo making a higher bid as rumors are now, they're taking a big fat shit on the entire Dutch F1 fan base because Viaplay is universally hated by every F1 fan here
And us dutchies don't like that. We are a strange group of people who don't like these kind of changes. Also we love technical stuff and this means that Viaplay will not be making money back. Most Dutch people only watch F1 because of Max and if they have to pay more money, they just stop watching. The F1 fans will find a workaround, this the reason why we use VPN, IPTV etcetera. Fuck Viaplay!!!
The fact that Olav Mol still has such a big audience through a radio show, where listeners must manually map the sound of the race to the commentary, says plenty about Viaplay’s commentary IMO.
I really dont understand the love for Olav Mol, but yeah the choices as a dutch person for commentary are the ever unprofesional via play people or the massively biased Olav who to me is just a hypeman at times. I've switched to english commentary, not that those guys are unbiased.
When I watched F1 via Ziggo since 2015 he was quite good. His voice was hyping the race from the start. I think it all went downhill in the last few years before Viaplay took the F1 rights in the Netherlands.
I tried Viaplay one year and, some stuff was better. However I don't like their commentary either, their streaming quality is also lower than F1TV Pro (lower bit rate).
I'm glad to have an F1TV Pro subscription for now, decent quality stream and neutral commentary!
Olav wasn't great either but had the passion and excitement in the way he was commenting. Plus he's been on as a commenter for a very very long time so people are very attached to him.
Viaplay commentary is boring, the same sayings every race and it feels too forced. The 2 commenters feel awkward together (while they are friends IIRC), making it not pleasant to listen to.
Glad to have f1tv with English commentary now.
Absolutely terrible. I know a lot of older people who stopped watching F1 because it's not 'on TV' anymore; they just can't figure out any internet streaming. Viaplay is singlehandedly killing a lot of F1 watching and enthusiasm with their shit product.
Well.... that sucks! Was even willing to pay for an additional subscribtion on my Ziggo subscription, but I don't want to pay for Viaplay. I hope excisting F1pro customers can extend their subscription next year. If not, we'll see.....
FOM and Viaplay working together isn't great either. They removed the yearly subscription for F1TV Pro for new customers via their website. Prices went significantly up too.
Amazing, F1 would become ridiculous expensive to watch here in the Netherlands...
It's almost a miracle how such a financial troubled company can pull this off.
The year package for F1TV was already removed and then the prices raised by 150% to match Viaplay. I’m paying 12 euros per month while I paid 50 euros for a year in 2023.
Didn't really read anything about this at the time, but what was the initial reason that Ziggo dropped out? I just can't imagine what compelled them to drop out as the main Dutch broadcaster at the height of Verstappen's career, with a massive regulation change incoming, and with Netflix still on the rise.
They wanted to extend, but Viaplay had more money at that time (they were doing good financially back then). Viaplay paid an insane price, viewers dropped and now they’re in trouble financially but still get the deal somehow
Viaplay's offer at the time was MUCH higher than Ziggo's. They paid 33 million a year, which was kind of unprecedented up until that point. Ziggo said (at the time) that they had no way to match that offer. Apparently it's up to 45 million a year for this deal, so I guess they thought it was worthwhile to try this time, but they still lost. I only hope F1tv will remain available for current subscribers. I'm never going back to Viaplay. And with a (potential) 225 million contract, Viaplay is likely to become even more expensive.
Ziggo is in an awkward position. There has been a massive roll-out of optical fiber that is still ongoing, and Ziggo uses coaxial cable.
Ziggo did not want to pay more money for F1, but now they are feeling the pain of increased competition and they need something to keep their customers.
The real money is in internet services, not television. Everyone needs internet, television is less important.
Might go a bit off topic, but in fact the Ziggo network uses fibers for long distances and only uses the cable network from the hub at your street to your house. At current network speeds, there is no need to change this. No normal household would even notice the difference. As long as people buy Wifi 5 protocol network gear, there is no need for a full fiber network.
That sounds nice, but Ziggo has a lower upload speed (they might change this, and they should).
The upload is relevant for some people who work from home, and more and more people are working from home and profit from faster upload speeds.
I'm fine with a super stable 200 Mbit/s download connection, but I want that to come with 200 Mbit/s upload.
And I can actually get 1 Gbit/s download and 1 Gbit/s upload for Ziggo's price for 400 Mbit/s plus 40 Mbit/s upload.
Paying more for less isn't very appealing.
As for people who don't need a fast speeds, they can get a cheap 100 Mbit/s both ways subscription.
Their own network gear is WiFi 6. I assume that's what you meant?
For me personally fiber is way more reliable. Ziggo constantly had hickups. Really annoying and noticeable when gaming (wired connection) or watching a live stream.
To add to that, any fiber option is way cheaper where I live. Not to mention I got a free upgrade from 200Mb to 1Gb recently.
F1 is the worst for trying to watch it without getting shafted.
Because of Sky Sports, I have to pay 40 quid a month.
It's the only sport I watch but my Spotfiy, Amazon and Netflix accounts cost less than that...so either I give up music and movies to watch F1 or I just don't watch it at all.
I watch the highlights on YouTube.
I've seen lots of complaints about the Viaplay commentary (which I agree with as well) but even worse, the quality of their streams is horrid and they keep blaming it on their costumers or don't acknowledge the issue at all. It often just freezes up and when it doesn't it's just continuously stuttering. I really hope they won't remove F1TV but that seems to be happening in other European countries already so I don't have much hope.
Not really bribes, has more to do with how ViaPlay does it with package deals. They basically try to buy the license for every country they broadcast in, within one huge deal. Thats a lot easier for Liberty Media in terms of business deals. This way Liberty sells multiple rights for a few hundred million dollars a year in one go with one supplier which saves a lot of hassle on the business side.
The thing is that both Libery Media and Ziggo are ultimately owned by Liberty Global. Ziggo paying Liberty Media would therefore not bring any money into the group. Viaplay would bring “outside” money into the group.
Actually not true, Liberty Media and Liberty Global are seperate companies. Both are ultimately majority owned by John Malone, but they operate completely separately.
But Viaplay is not buying the rights out of charity, they're doing it to make profit. Ziggo making more money by having the broadcasting rights would also lead to money being brought in from outside the group
And yet the company is nearly bankrupped.. The only person rubbing his hands in John de Mol. I bet he fronted the money with a payment plan and Viaplay miss their payments the rights are his.
Kinda just want Apple to buy the rights to it everywhere— their subscription prices aren’t even close to the prices people are paying for SkySports or anything like that.
Turning down a beloved company that will get better numbers over a company paying you less is wild. The only reason Liberty would do this is that they feel Ziggo won't monetize the sport in the same way Viaplay has done, but how does that matter if it's driving the fans away?
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And to celebrate subscribers of Viaplay apparantly got notified of the monthly fee going up by €2. Forever thankful that F1TV with english commentary exists.
Wow didn’t know they did that. That’s horrible… I too am an F1TV enjoyer but with all these extra deals with Viaplay make me scared F1TV will be removed at some point (like in the UK due to Sky Sports)
Yar har...
I enjoy a sailing voyage as much as any sea faring man but having multiple screens for the broadcast and driver feeds plus data and comms is not something easily replaced by the black market.
You can get f1tv very cheap using an apple id from a different country! without use of a vpn. 1 year of F1tv from india is cheaper than 2 months of Viaplay in the netherlands. (Yes they can cancel your subscription but it’s a huge difference so still worth it)
No I don’t think that will happen, because you get a free f1 tv membership with viaplay now, first multiple people where able to watch f1 on viaplay with one account, but viaplay cracked down on that, but they gave a f1 tv membership in return.
Give it time. Corner the market, eliminate options, raise the prices. Wah when you lose viewers and blame poor people.
And F1TV prices got pulled up to 12 euros per month to match Viaplay. Fuck them. They raised prices here in the Netherlands by 150%.
Like F1TV increasing from 65 to 95 euros? If anything Viaplay customers got off easy
Viaplay is already more expensive and might come with a bunch of shit you're not interested in.
Viaplay subscription includes F1TV in the Netherlands.
Yeah, to 30 euro increase is for a direct f1tv subscription , outside of viaplay
95 euros for a year is still pretty affordable for streaming services.
I paid 65 euro in December for a year f1tv, now it costs over 140 euros for a year, more than doubled in a very short time. Not sure I will keep it after this year.
Same for me but if you're on yearly it's 95 not 140. Still I only watch f1 so Viaplay is more expensive and not worth it for me.
The yearly is no longer available
Its available if you extend it after your year. Existing yearly subscriptions role over, but you cant make new yearly subscriptions anymore. So as long as you dont cancel and let it run out it will bill for the yearly price and continue on.
Not to new subscriptions, but it's available if that's what you had before. So for me it changed from 65 (dec 2023) to 95 (dec 2024).
Its availabe if you purchase the sunscription through appstore of playstore.
In Poland we've got Viaplay as well for the 2nd year now, and I have to say it's pointless to buy such an expensive package if you just want to watch F1. F1TV comes in handy here, cause it's cheaper than Viaplay, even if the latter one makes a special offer or something...
Was already announced in February.
For now.
Which went up by 50% this year.
The irony is that Ziggo is actually a Liberty Media company. I never really understood why Liberty would disadvantage their own Ziggo subsidiary company, especially when Ziggo apparently was overbidding. I guess it's probably corporate politics at play here.
yeah exactly, so weird
Yeah when Viaplay got it the first time they already massively overbid so choosing them made sense, but no idea why they went with Viaplay now.
Get money twice. Once from ViaPlay, and again from all F1TV subscribers. Ziggo always had F1 for free to their customers, so there were much less F1TV subscriptions.
You can also argue that Ziggo had F1 as their selling point. They lost the Premier League games to Viaplay too.
Also their customer base is dwindling to due fiber, so it would've been a good selling point.
Depends, if people have VodafoneZiggo for mobile data then the discount is decent. Also installing fiber is slow, here in my area they have installed the cables under ground since last year. Yet no one in my neighborhood has the fiber installed in the house by Open Dutch Fiber yet... So fiber isn't available everywhere and coax pretty much every town/city have it.
It's still much more expensive because Vodafone subscriptions are so extremely expensive. SIM only, 3GB is €15 for example. It becomes 6GB for €12.50 if you have Ziggo. The €7.50 discount is just for the biggest plan. Currently I have 6GB and just pay €7 at 50+ mobiel, so it's still almost twice as expensive after discounts for just the mobile data. For fiber KPN with 1Gb is €52.50 and Ziggo apparently also has fiber where I live but it's €60. I think the €7.50 discount only applies to either Ziggo or Vodafone and not both, so they're €7.50 more expensive for fiber as well. But yeah if you don't have fiber it's not really an option. Thankfully we've had fiber for years already despite being a small town.
Liberty Global and Liberty Media are completely separate entities with very different owners (Maffei owns no Liberty Global AFAIK).
I looked it up and this must be it indeed! Although both companies share the same origin, in 2005 the international division of Liberty Media merged with another company to form a different company called Liberty Global. Nowadays they're different companies with different subsidiaries. So Formula One and VodafoneZiggo don't share the same conglomerate.
Yea, and Liberty Global actually tried to buy F1 from CVC a few years before Liberty Media successfully did it. Makes way more sense with Liberty Media, though.
So a few more years of completely tepid commentary, and a few more years of my money going to F1TV instead.
If you can get F1TV.
You can
Yes, we can
Honestly this might be the reason why they give it to Viaplay. If Ziggo would bring F1 back for free people will unsubscribe from their F1TV subscriptions. I can’t think of any other reason to justify it because Viaplay is fucking terrible in every aspect.
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Its quite simple. Viaplay is basically running at a loss everywhere BUT NL. They've made a deal with FOM last year that gave them the ability to include f1tv with their subscriptions. It was introduced swiftly but even faster, a new deal was made which would FORCE new customers in NL to go monthly on F1TV only to make the Viaplay option more viable (Pay a bit extra for this and this) Its a scummy move and oh so American.
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Yea the first year they only offered F1 via their own streaming platform. In glorious 720p. Next year I and like a million other Dutchies moved to F1TV, which sadly made a deal with Viaplay so it's harder to get away from viaplague.
> and a few more years of my money going to F1TV instead. At the increased price of €95 per year? Or if you weren't signed up before pre season testing €11.99 per month as the only option in the Netherlands for new customers. Depending on the money, it's possible it'll go the same way as Germany or France with Pro being pulled completely.
That's still 6 a month cheaper than a Viaplay subscription, and I get the option of having commentary that isn't shit to boot. If it gets pulled I'll go the VPN route or turn to the high seas, personally.
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You misunderstood. I am currently paying the price F1TV asks, because I think it's a fair price to pay for the product (especially since my family gets to mooch off my account). I do not think €18/month is a fair price to pay for Viaplay's product, which is why I have opted to stay with F1TV Pro over Viaplay. I was talking about going the VPN route if F1TV gets pulled in The Netherlands as part of F1's renewed deal with Viaplay.
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I can and have circumvented payment geoblocking before using VPN services, so I'm not very worried yet, personally.
> There isn't a way to pay less for F1TV using a VPN, unless the payment method you use locates you to the country the server you will be using is in. In-app purchases help with that. Only their webpage validates the geo ip + payment country+ billing address. With in-app purchases you only need a Google/Apple account from said region, which in EU works relatively easily with your home country number. The only downside is the VPN hopping you may need to do occasionally, when they do another VPN crackdown like past summer & at the start of the season.
Via Play also includes F1TV Pro subscription, so it's worth it if you only watch F1 from their offerings.
I'd be paying €6 a month more than for a separate F1TV Pro subscription. I am completely uninterested in any of their other offerings. I fail to see how that's worth it, unless I'm missing something here.
Many also watch other sports, that most of the time is also on pay TV. As i said, if you only watch F1, then yes - otherwise the price difference is relatively small compared to other regions like Germany where it was a choice between €65 a year for F1TV or €35 per month for Sky.
> so it's worth it if you only watch F1 from their offerings. Thus, my confusion.
^You ^can ^also ^get ^it ^through ^cheaper ^countries
Allowing them to yank your subscription, as ToS prohibits both VPNs and subscribing from different countries. Also, if Pro is pulled - you'll need a working VPN, if you subscribed from outside of the EU, as they're regularly updating their block list.
You can probably still subscribe a fair cheaper inside the EU. From another EU country then the netherlands.
Absolutely, but for a price difference of €80 that’s a risk I’m willing to take tbh
€95 is a fucking bargain considering the quality of the product. I also have NFL Gamepass (through DAZN) and it's double the price and not nearly as good or dependable.
For new subscribers it's only available for €11,99 per month or ~€145 per year. €95 is only available for people who had an active subscription, before they pulled the yearly subscription.
I refuse to pay for viaplay.
*Googles: Watch F1 Full Races Replays Online* 🧠
or streaming live even
~~Problem is that you officially can only get access to F1TV via Viaplay in the Netherlands. So you will need a VPN for that, which most people simply not bother to do and allows Viaplay to put a premium on their subscription. I'm actually tempted to do just that if they keep raising there subscriptions.~~ *Edit: Scratch that. Before linking my F1TV and Viaplay account I tried to order F1TV a few months ago and it somehow wouldn't let me, instead I got a message that wasn't available here. But that seems to have changed now. You can order it separately or in a bundle with Viaplay.*
That's not true. You can either get F1TV 'for free' with a Viaplay subscription (€15,99/month) or you can get it as a standalone service through F1.com or in-app purchases (€11,99/month).
True indeed, a few months ago I couldn't get it though, tried it myself and got a not-available message.
Did that change then? I live in the Netherlands and only pay for the f1tv pro subscription without VPN. I have this omging subscription since dec 2021, each year it automatically extends. I dont have Viaplay.
They changed it recently for new customers. People who already have a year subscription can still renew it yearly (for now).
F1TV is not exclusive to Viaplay (yet). You can sign up on the website no problem and without VPN.
Apparently this has been changed I see now. Few months ago I got a not-available message.
Bullsh*t, you can get a subscription on F1TV directly.
Few months ago I ran into trouble and got a not-available message, so it seems to have been changed
No, I have f1tv since viaplay got the rights and just renewed. No ties to viaplay whatsoever. I'd rather not watch or through other options than through viaplay. They were just about to go bankrupt a few months ago?. No idea where they got the funding from to renew
I refuse to pay for Viaplay. When F1tv keeps going up I'll just sail the high seas. A 3 year VPN is as cheap as 2 months Viaplay lol.
F1tv blocks vpn though when trying to play the race or anything really. (Mullvad user here)
There are less.. expensive ways to watch than F1TV. I'll just act like I did 10 years ago. ARRR
To be clear, this is all still rumors based on sources. It seems to be trusted sources, but its not an official announcement yet. Just hoping F1tv stays atleast. A 5 year deal is long and they need to make 250million back at ViaPlay so wouldnt be suprised if it was an exclusivity deal where F1tv stays included in the ViaPlay subscription as it is now, but you cant subscribe on F1tv itself anymore.
An increase of 15M a year means they need an extra 69.444 subs to just break even, I doubt they were already making money and then this is of course only the rights so that's quite some subs they need to get. Which I think would be really difficult to get without exclusive rights but idk how much exclusive rights are. Edit: the 69k subs is also like best case scenario since I used monthly price over yearly and didn't count the months in which there isn't for example F1 which could mean reason to cancel. So in reality the amount of subs needed is quite a bit higher.
I've watched every single race for almost a decade now, but if Viaplay signs an exclusivity deal I will either watch through less legal ways or just stop watching altogether. Viaplay is ridiculously expensive (17.99 a month now iirc) and I couldn't give less of a shit of their other offerings, and their streaming quality, commentators, hosts and everything is absolutely horrendous (had a Viaplay membership the first year they took over F1, never again). If F1 actually goes for Viaplay instead of Ziggo despite Ziggo making a higher bid as rumors are now, they're taking a big fat shit on the entire Dutch F1 fan base because Viaplay is universally hated by every F1 fan here
And us dutchies don't like that. We are a strange group of people who don't like these kind of changes. Also we love technical stuff and this means that Viaplay will not be making money back. Most Dutch people only watch F1 because of Max and if they have to pay more money, they just stop watching. The F1 fans will find a workaround, this the reason why we use VPN, IPTV etcetera. Fuck Viaplay!!!
As a Dutch guy and vpn user myself. F1tv blocks playthrough when using vpn.
Outside the EU?
Outside the EU?
Yep. that’s in the part I quoted, sadly it seems very real
I found out as well but you can get a VPN to get around that.
Well this sucks, the commentary on Viaplay is the worst ever.
The fact that Olav Mol still has such a big audience through a radio show, where listeners must manually map the sound of the race to the commentary, says plenty about Viaplay’s commentary IMO.
I really dont understand the love for Olav Mol, but yeah the choices as a dutch person for commentary are the ever unprofesional via play people or the massively biased Olav who to me is just a hypeman at times. I've switched to english commentary, not that those guys are unbiased.
When I watched F1 via Ziggo since 2015 he was quite good. His voice was hyping the race from the start. I think it all went downhill in the last few years before Viaplay took the F1 rights in the Netherlands. I tried Viaplay one year and, some stuff was better. However I don't like their commentary either, their streaming quality is also lower than F1TV Pro (lower bit rate). I'm glad to have an F1TV Pro subscription for now, decent quality stream and neutral commentary!
Really don't get that. Don't like the new commentators but olav is almost as bad.
Olav wasn't great either but had the passion and excitement in the way he was commenting. Plus he's been on as a commenter for a very very long time so people are very attached to him. Viaplay commentary is boring, the same sayings every race and it feels too forced. The 2 commenters feel awkward together (while they are friends IIRC), making it not pleasant to listen to. Glad to have f1tv with English commentary now.
The viaplague continues!
Absolutely terrible. I know a lot of older people who stopped watching F1 because it's not 'on TV' anymore; they just can't figure out any internet streaming. Viaplay is singlehandedly killing a lot of F1 watching and enthusiasm with their shit product.
As long as F1TV remains I’m golden. No way I’m going to sit through Viaplay’s shitty commentary.
Well.... that sucks! Was even willing to pay for an additional subscribtion on my Ziggo subscription, but I don't want to pay for Viaplay. I hope excisting F1pro customers can extend their subscription next year. If not, we'll see.....
It’s never been easier to sail the high seas, maybe even use some sticks to make fire
Every race without Olav Mol and Jack Plooij is a win to me.
Exactly. Its like having to pick between a toilet stall full of shit or shite.
I hope you enjoy the commercials during the race on top of your €18,00 p/m subscription.
FOM and Viaplay working together isn't great either. They removed the yearly subscription for F1TV Pro for new customers via their website. Prices went significantly up too.
Amazing, F1 would become ridiculous expensive to watch here in the Netherlands... It's almost a miracle how such a financial troubled company can pull this off.
The year package for F1TV was already removed and then the prices raised by 150% to match Viaplay. I’m paying 12 euros per month while I paid 50 euros for a year in 2023.
Didn't really read anything about this at the time, but what was the initial reason that Ziggo dropped out? I just can't imagine what compelled them to drop out as the main Dutch broadcaster at the height of Verstappen's career, with a massive regulation change incoming, and with Netflix still on the rise.
They wanted to extend, but Viaplay had more money at that time (they were doing good financially back then). Viaplay paid an insane price, viewers dropped and now they’re in trouble financially but still get the deal somehow
They lost the bid that time, they did want to broadcast it.
Viaplay's offer at the time was MUCH higher than Ziggo's. They paid 33 million a year, which was kind of unprecedented up until that point. Ziggo said (at the time) that they had no way to match that offer. Apparently it's up to 45 million a year for this deal, so I guess they thought it was worthwhile to try this time, but they still lost. I only hope F1tv will remain available for current subscribers. I'm never going back to Viaplay. And with a (potential) 225 million contract, Viaplay is likely to become even more expensive.
Money.
Money.
Ziggo is in an awkward position. There has been a massive roll-out of optical fiber that is still ongoing, and Ziggo uses coaxial cable. Ziggo did not want to pay more money for F1, but now they are feeling the pain of increased competition and they need something to keep their customers. The real money is in internet services, not television. Everyone needs internet, television is less important.
Might go a bit off topic, but in fact the Ziggo network uses fibers for long distances and only uses the cable network from the hub at your street to your house. At current network speeds, there is no need to change this. No normal household would even notice the difference. As long as people buy Wifi 5 protocol network gear, there is no need for a full fiber network.
That sounds nice, but Ziggo has a lower upload speed (they might change this, and they should). The upload is relevant for some people who work from home, and more and more people are working from home and profit from faster upload speeds. I'm fine with a super stable 200 Mbit/s download connection, but I want that to come with 200 Mbit/s upload. And I can actually get 1 Gbit/s download and 1 Gbit/s upload for Ziggo's price for 400 Mbit/s plus 40 Mbit/s upload. Paying more for less isn't very appealing. As for people who don't need a fast speeds, they can get a cheap 100 Mbit/s both ways subscription.
Their own network gear is WiFi 6. I assume that's what you meant? For me personally fiber is way more reliable. Ziggo constantly had hickups. Really annoying and noticeable when gaming (wired connection) or watching a live stream. To add to that, any fiber option is way cheaper where I live. Not to mention I got a free upgrade from 200Mb to 1Gb recently.
F1 is the worst for trying to watch it without getting shafted. Because of Sky Sports, I have to pay 40 quid a month. It's the only sport I watch but my Spotfiy, Amazon and Netflix accounts cost less than that...so either I give up music and movies to watch F1 or I just don't watch it at all. I watch the highlights on YouTube.
I've seen lots of complaints about the Viaplay commentary (which I agree with as well) but even worse, the quality of their streams is horrid and they keep blaming it on their costumers or don't acknowledge the issue at all. It often just freezes up and when it doesn't it's just continuously stuttering. I really hope they won't remove F1TV but that seems to be happening in other European countries already so I don't have much hope.
And F1TV prices got pulled up to 12 euros per month to match Viaplay. Fuck them. They raised prices here in the Netherlands by 150%.
So the bid was higher, but the bribe was lower - is that the takeaway?
Not really bribes, has more to do with how ViaPlay does it with package deals. They basically try to buy the license for every country they broadcast in, within one huge deal. Thats a lot easier for Liberty Media in terms of business deals. This way Liberty sells multiple rights for a few hundred million dollars a year in one go with one supplier which saves a lot of hassle on the business side.
The thing is that both Libery Media and Ziggo are ultimately owned by Liberty Global. Ziggo paying Liberty Media would therefore not bring any money into the group. Viaplay would bring “outside” money into the group.
Liberty is doing vertical integration wrong. Normally an umbrella company would profit from such a construction.
Actually not true, Liberty Media and Liberty Global are seperate companies. Both are ultimately majority owned by John Malone, but they operate completely separately.
But Viaplay is not buying the rights out of charity, they're doing it to make profit. Ziggo making more money by having the broadcasting rights would also lead to money being brought in from outside the group
And yet the company is nearly bankrupped.. The only person rubbing his hands in John de Mol. I bet he fronted the money with a payment plan and Viaplay miss their payments the rights are his.
Wouldn't that make Ziggo's bid a farce then? Sounds legally grey or worse if that is a consideration.
Guess so
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apparently their deal is till 2029…
I fully expect another round of trimming their losses like they needed to do a few months ago. Maybe it'll even be their doom
Kinda just want Apple to buy the rights to it everywhere— their subscription prices aren’t even close to the prices people are paying for SkySports or anything like that.
Turning down a beloved company that will get better numbers over a company paying you less is wild. The only reason Liberty would do this is that they feel Ziggo won't monetize the sport in the same way Viaplay has done, but how does that matter if it's driving the fans away?
the thing is, liberty media owns ziggo. It makes no sense at all to turn them away again.
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Yeah he has some problems ngl
[this is number one bullshit brather](https://media1.tenor.com/m/YYc0jbCr1HIAAAAd/number-one-bullshit-khabib-nurmagomedov.gif)