F1与苹果电视合作成效引关注
F1今年在美国转向苹果电视独家转播，F1与苹果称收视与互动表现良好，但第三方机构称家庭触达下降，双方衡量指标不同。
F1在美国转向苹果电视，是近年来F1转播格局最大的变化之一——但这笔合作是否见效？
苹果今年成为F1在美国的独家转播方，协议为期五年，标志着F1在可称其最大市场上从线性电视向流媒体服务的重大转变。
F1在今年早些时候的赛季中期报告中表示，苹果带来了“出色的收视与互动表现”；苹果副总裁埃迪·库伊则称，与上一赛季在ESPN相比，收视“在比赛日实现显著的两位数百分比增长，更重要的是在周六”。
但电视分析机构Samba等第三方称，转向苹果电视后家庭触达下降，不过该指标不含观看时长；F1首席执行官斯特凡诺·多梅尼卡利称，按观看时长计算，F1今年8月在美国同比增长13%。
F1所有者自由媒体集团的首席执行官兼总裁德里克·张在奥斯汀由The Race和Axios联合举办的“Formula One's Premium Playbook”活动上，与Axios媒体记者萨拉·费舍尔谈到了这一话题。
“去年正是在奥斯汀这里，我们宣布了与苹果的合作协议。当时我们说，‘看，我们所关注的是超越传统转播覆盖范围的东西，也就是我们多年来衡量收视率的方式，或者坦率地说，是参与度，这才是现在真正的关键指标，’”张解释道。
“一年前我们说的是，我们要找的是一个像苹果这样的合作伙伴，其用户群体非常相似，有很好的重叠，然后是苹果生态系统以及我们能利用它做的事情，无论是在Apple News、Apple TV、Apple Store上，还是在你的iPhone上推广比赛。我认为苹果在美国拥有60%的市场份额。
“然后是他们可以在产品上做的许多其他创新内容，我认为他们的工程师一直在努力推进，无论是能够关注你想要的任何车手、拥有多个信号源，还是诸如此类在未来几年只会不断改进的东西。所有这些，在我看来，都完全按计划在推进。
"更重要的是，美国乃至坦率地说全世界的媒体分发格局多年来一直在僵化。现在我们有了一个合作伙伴，它既是分发平台，也是广播机构。
"所以苹果所做的，比如……与Netflix合作，让Netflix能够转播加拿大大奖赛[在美国]，或者苹果拥有《极速求生》第八季，与IMAX影院达成协议，让人们能在影院观看我们的比赛。
"他们能够做到传统广播机构和分发平台做不到的事情，因为后者被合同束缚得太紧、受合同限制太多。
"这是一个不断演变的事情，我们将继续关注。"
Chang 重申了 F1 对 Apple 的承诺，远不止履行这份五年协议。
“我们预期会有一个很棒的合作伙伴。他们的表现完全符合我们的预期，坦率地说甚至更好，”Chang 说道。
“这是众所周知的事。这是一份五年协议，我们完全有意在这段时间内与他们建立出色的合作关系，并希望能延续到之后。”
对 F1 来说，确切的收视人数只是它追求的指标之一。更重要的是它能触达多广泛的受众，即使这意味着车迷以不同的方式参与其中。
“你不再需要把F1当成必须每场比赛都去现场、或者每场比赛都在电视上看才能算粉丝的东西了，对吧？”张说。
“现在，我们当然希望每一位与F1相关的人都能一天24小时关注F1、去每一场比赛或者每场比赛都在电视上看，但我们知道那不会发生，对吧？
“但一项重要的数据是，我们在外面有数亿粉丝，其中60%的粉丝每天都与F1互动。
“显然我们不是每天都比赛。所以这些内容就是……无论是精彩集锦，还是即将到来的比赛的预览，还是生活方式类的东西，对吧？
“像这类人们希望每天参与的内容，能让他们融入这项运动，让他们觉得自己是这项运动的一部分，并且让这项运动始终在他们心中占据首要位置。”
英文原文
Formula 1’s pivot to Apple TV in the United States has been one of the biggest shifts in F1’s broadcast landscape in recent times - but is it paying off?
Apple became the exclusive F1 broadcaster in the US this year with a five-year deal, marking a major shift from linear TV to a streaming service in arguably F1’s biggest market.
F1 said Apple was delivering "excellent viewership and engagement" in its mid-season report earlier this year, while Apple vice president Eddy Cue claimed viewership was "up by significant double-digit percentage growth on the race day, and more importantly on Saturdays" versus the previous season on ESPN.
But third parties such as TV analytics firm Samba have claimed household reach since the switch to Apple TV is down, though that doesn’t include hours watched, a metric by which F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said F1 was up in the US 13% year-on-year in August.
It’s a topic that CEO and president of F1 owner Liberty Media Derek Chang spoke about with Axios Media Correspondent Sara Fischer at 'Formula One's Premium Playbook', an event hosted by The Race and Axios in Austin.
"It was last year here in Austin that we announced the Apple deal. At the time we said, 'look, what we're looking at is something that goes beyond sort of traditional broadcast reach, which is the way we've measured viewership for however many years, or frankly, engagement, which is really the key metric now'," Chang explained.
"What we said a year ago was, what we're looking for is a partner like Apple [that] has a very similar demographic, great overlap there, and then the Apple ecosystem and what we can do with that, whether it's promoting the races on Apple News, Apple TV, in the Apple Store, on your iPhone. I think Apple has a 60% market share in the US.
"Then a lot of the other innovative stuff they can do with the product, which I think their engineers continue to be hard at work on, whether it's being able to follow whatever driver you want, having multiple feeds, all that sort of stuff that will only improve over the next few years. All of that, to me, has been playing out exactly as planned.
"On top of that, the media distribution landscape in the US, and frankly around the world, has been calcifying for years. Now we've got a partner here who is the distribution platform, as well as the broadcaster.
"So what Apple has done in terms of... doing something with Netflix, where Netflix was able to broadcast the Canadian Grand Prix [in the US], or Apple had Season 8 of Drive to Survive, doing a deal with IMAX Theatres, so that people could view our races in theatres.
"They're able to do things that more traditional broadcasters and distribution platforms, because they're so hung up in their contracts and restricted by their contracts, can't do.
"That's an evolving thing that we’ll continue to watch for."
Chang reaffirmed F1’s commitment to Apple that goes well beyond honouring the five-year deal.
"We anticipated having a great partner. They performed exactly the way we thought and frankly even better," Chang said.
"It's common knowledge. It's a five-year deal and we have every intent of having a great partnership with them during that time and hopefully beyond."
For F1, the exact viewership number is only one of the metrics it's chasing. Far more important is how wide an audience it can reach, even if that means fans are engaging in different ways.
"You no longer think about F1 as something that you've got to go to every race or watch every race on television to be a fan, right?" Chang said.
"Now, we would love every person associated with F1 to follow F1 24 hours a day, go to every race or watch every race on TV, but we know that's not going to happen, right?
"But one of the important stats is that we have hundreds of millions of fans out there [and] 60% of those fans engage with F1 on a daily basis.
"Obviously we don't race every day. So this is content that is... whether it's highlights, whether it's previews of upcoming races, whether it's lifestyle things, right?
"Stuff like that that people want to engage with on a daily basis, and that brings them into the sport, makes them feel like they're part of the sport, and it’s front of mind for those people."
The Race ·
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