>I might get back into F1 just for this.

I wouldn't be so hasty, as the service has had some blackouts.

https://www.gpfans.com/en/articles/38904/f1-tv-offering-comp...

Yes and they actually refunded some percentage of the subscription fee for that, and sent a long email apologizing. I mean, I take it over many other services which just ignore the problems.

Disclaimer: Happy subscriber and an F1 fan.

I‘m sorry but you must be kidding. They are having an outage on the pro service every, at least(!), second race weekend. The service usually goes down right at the start of the race and all people get is a tweet on @F1Help twitter account saying „we are aware of the issue and working on it“. Canadian GP was available for some users from lap 50! All was fine until 2 minutes before the start of the race.

Yes, they refund and send nice emails but people don‘t want refunds - they want to see a race!

Just check that twitter account, it‘s hilarious. I have cancelled the subscription, it was so bad.

To add to that, every single time they claim their engineers are trying to identify and fix the problem. For months now. It‘s like they work only during race sessions. No post mortems, no description of what measures have been taken to resolve the problem.

It‘s not even possible to load the help chat sometimes. The website during those outages barely works. Can‘t log out, can‘t log in.

The mobile app is another garbage. People being advised to reinstall the app when having login problems. Also for months!

It‘s garbage. Which is shocking. There are so many paid tv services streaming hundreds of channels and not having any of those problem. For a powerhouse like Liberty Media and F1, this is ridiculous.

Sorry that wasn't my experience but I would also cancel it if I went through the same troubles. Maybe it's regional, maybe i'm just lucky. I just hope that I can keep watching the races one way or another and happy that I could until now, except for one.

F1TV has been horrible, in my experience.

We pay for it, but still use pirate streams if we want to watch an actual race live!

It is not 100% non-geo blocked considering F1 had contracts for exclusive coverage from earlier. But, once those contracts end, it will be available everywhere. (as far as I know UK is one where its not available due to deal with SKY)

The streaming also has some technical issues as they vastly underestimated the demand and the server could not take the load. Latest occurrence was at Canadian GP. I am not praising the service in the current state, but I strongly feel that is the way forward for sports broadcast. I have been an early adopter, and like the options I am provided (along with the influx of data I get) when the traditional TV streaming felt constraining and powerless.

Liberty Media has also done a really good job with the F1 YouTube channel in recent years, providing an avenue for casual fans to keep up with the season.

Too bad the 2019 season is shaping up so poorly...

Liberty Media has indeed done well. I can now easily keep up with highlights and also purchase/stream races live which are affordable and available by race/entire season at reasonable prices.

World Rally Championship (WRC) is doing this too.

Cricket caught up too, ICC cricket world cup that occurs once every 4 years and this tournament is going on right now, ICC is now offering highlights packages on the official youtube accounts. There wasn't a way to purchase/watch highlights of games even if one wanted to pay for it before.

Even French open tennis had highlights packages available on their official youtube accounts.

Provide some basic stuff out for free, in interest of promoting the sport, consider it cost of user acquisition. And, then provide options to stream/additional access for a reasonable cost. Seems to work well for some sports, wonder when others will catch up.

We almost got away with a real race last weekend ...

It is still geo-fenced - its not available in the UK.

Is that a condition of Sky Sports' broadcast deal with F1?

Yes, Sky have exclusive live coverage (apart from the British GP) in the UK until 2024.

I recently got back into F1. The viewing experience is amazing, so much better than what I remember from youth. Even if I do miss my favorite commentator.

And I love that I can watch the replay at my leisure on any device. That is amazing.

However ... would it kill them to remember where I stopped watching and continue the replay from there? I don’t always (ie never) have the patience to sit through a 2 hour race

Is the commentator Murray Walker by any chance :-)

Slovenian commentator in Slovenia. Did every race for some 20 years.

He truly is F1 to me. The experience just isn’t the same without him :D

Wow, that is cool to hear. We used to get the British coverage, so grew up with Murray Walker.

This could be done with football too (albeit a little more limited, but still). That would actually be cool.

If only they spent all the money they used to identify the games on actual customer-beneficial things ...

It is geofenced in countries where someone holds the rights to broadcast F1 (like New Zealand). No F1TV for us.