The Sport Thread

Yes, confirmation that they've extended their deal until the end of the 2023/24 season:

https://www.thenationalleague.org.uk/bt-sport-broadcast-deal-extended-by-three-more-yea-64823

There's some interesting things going on on YouTube presentation wise where people, presumably F1 enthusiasts, have done historic F1 grids in the style of the current graphics, with all the animations, the music bed, the "swooshes" and whatever else. The quality of these varies through depending on who's doing them.

Example from the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix in the modern style:


As you might expect, this soon took on a life of its own and now we have people who mocked up "grids" for Sega Games in the F1 style, here the so-called "Sega Hedgehogs Grand Prix":


But the other side of the coin is Matt Amys, who not only started the trend of grid recreations, but also did this for what is regarded as the 1st Grand Prix, the British Grand Prix of 1950 which wouldn't have been televised at the time, that not starting as a thing until 1953:


There's a separate video on his channel which explains the amount of work that went into this, as it was cobbled together from newsreel footage and documentaries.

Former BBC Sports reporter Kevin Gearey has died.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/55409684

Advanced talks are ongoing between the FIA & Amazon about streaming future live F1 races via Amazon Prime Video.

https://www.motorsportweek.com/2020/12/24/f1-in-advanced-talks-to-stream-races-on-amazon/?feed_id=12938

AWS already sponsor the technical in-race graphics, and from the start of the past season, David Croft has even mentioned 'heres some race insights provided by AWS' in the commentary.

Of course, Sky in the UK and Ireland have the rights until the end of the 2023 season, hence why F1's own OTT service, isn't available in the UK, but I've always expected that to end when the rights come up for renewal, and Sky win the live pay-tv rights again (unless BT throw in a speculative bid).

Getting further 'into bed' with Amazon and offering the full set of extra whistles and bells which you used to have access to via the BBC and Sky red button services via Prime for all the races in the season wouldn't be a bad idea, and even more if lumped into the usual AZ Prime price instead of a pay extra premium charge - although that could be a very large bit of wishful thinking.

Might not be that wishful - Amazon aren't doing TV because they want to make money from selling TV programmes (or adverts around those programmes), they're doing it because they want more people to sign up to prime to make them their default online shopping source.

Speaking of Amazon, tomorrow at 9.30PM is their first 'worldwide exclusive' NFL match. Except in the UK where Sky also have rights to broadcast it.

(Not sure if it's exclusive to Sky but the Fox/NFL Network/Prime broadcasts in the US are available on both Sky and Prime here)

Anyway last time a online exclusive game happened with a Yahoo Sports game back in 2017, Sky had a version where the Yahoo branding on the scorebar was removed, meaning it only covered half of it's usual space, and the BBC had a clean feed which they added the rugby scorebar to.

Presumably Amazon will use their own graphics so it may be worth keeping an eye on Sky to check for any oddities.

Available on Amazon here so not exclusive to Sky

Ireland (naturally), Spain, and China are also excluded from Amazon’s exclusivity

https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-delivers-gift-football-prime-members-nfl-holiday-blitz

It may not be their own graphics, either. Afaik it’s being produced by CBS. The local stations carrying it are the NBC O&O in SF and the Fox affiliate in Phoenix.

I think the situation @TIGHazard mentions actually applied to a previous Yahoo game (Buffalo@Jacksonville) in 2015. During that game Sky had a version of the graphics (which were the NFL on CBS graphics of the time) with the Yahoo logo missing while the BBC had a clean feed.

For Baltimore@Jacksonville in 2017, which Sky had (but not, I think, the BBC), the feed on Yahoo got CBS graphics but recoloured purple and with a Yahoo logo. However, on Sky, we actually got the normal CBS graphics, which is presumably what went out on the local CBS stations carrying the game.

As previously mentioned here, we're now in an extraordinary situation tonight where BT are currently carrying TWO Cricket test matches simultaneously across BTS2 and BTS3, whereas Sky Sports Cricket is showing reruns, short features and documentaries.

Not sure why this is extraordinary. Not dissimilar to BT airing the Champions League final whilst Sky Sports Football is showing the highlights of League 2 - no broadcaster is going to have all the rights for the entirety of a sport.

The extraordinary aspect being that it's never happened before. BT have only ever had ONE test match at any one time. Since BT snatched the Australian Cricket contract from under Sky's noses, the NZ equivalent test has been on Sky.