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Liberty Media chief executive Greg Maffei has scoffed at the amount paid for F1's television rights by the American broadcaster NBC.
Headed by US media tycoon John Malone, Liberty has talked about expanding F1 within America and borrowing from the successes of popular US sports events like the Super Bowl.
But chief executive Maffei scoffed at the reported $3 million paid by NBC to televise the races.
"The US is, you know, it's a popcorn fart," Maffei is quoted in Forbes by F1 business journalist Christian Sylt. "The opportunity is good, certainly in percentage terms, not in absolute dollar terms. It is very low."
Sylt said NBC's contract runs out at the end of 2017, with Maffei admitting there is scope to see the value of the deal increase.
"We are going to do far better on those renewals to the degree a couple of things happen. First, we have passion, viewership etc and two, the extent there's competition," he said.
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Replies (1)
Login to replyRam Samartha
Posts: 1,172
NBC has shit coverage of F1 races. With Liberty's ties to Murdoch maybe we will get some good coverage of races without all the damn commercial advertisements like SkyF1 does. Most F1 fans I know in the US (not many) watch SkyF1 coverage for full races without commercials. In order to increase the tv value they have to increase the market. That can only be done by having more races in the US. Frankly, nobody in the US wants to go to Texas, even for an F1 race.