1st April 20103. Thanks to an agreement with English Sky UK and FOM (Formula One Management) Sky 3D Italia aired a live coverage of all four days of testing of the F1 from February 28th to March 3rd from 15-17,30.
Cosetta Lagani head of SKY 3D Italy comments: "As per the Formula 1 we have just faced the first world test in 3D, as no one has ever seen broadcast footage of Formula 1 in the stereoscopic format on television."
The event was diffused by the two channels in simulcast: Sky 3D and Sky Sports Formula 1 HD and the same transmission was produced by only one team for the comment.
The recent growth in 3D TV sets was so quick in the latest months because about 85% of new TVs provides 3D functionality embedded; then the consumer who buys a new generation TV already takes home a compatible equipment for 3D stereoscopy. Official figures describe around 1,300,000 stereoscopic television sets already present in our homes, so you can easily refer to these figures considering a rather important base that is definitely growing."
Cosetta Lagani comments: "To be noted, that the market situation described from September 2011 with approximately 200,000 3D TVs to the current situation -developed in a bit more than a year- sees a diffusion to be considered more than encouraging: we are right on the wave."
Sky 3D experience is considered of great satisfaction from spectators and more in general, official figures (Ansa) concerning the Formula 1 describe an audience boom in 2013. The agreement of sharing rights between Sky and RAI has led to a doubling of overall average viewers for the first Grand Prix season, held in Melbourne, Australia.
Sky on 17th March at 7 am sent to air for the first time ever - and at the same time on 9 channels in Hd - the race that opened the world championship and gathered in that first date some 606,000 average viewers, that is twice as much as it occurred in 2009. And that figure increases when aggregating the ratings of 979,000 viewers collected from the replicas of 10.30, 14 and 17.30.
Well done also for Rai, who for the first step of the race, at 14 hrs on RAI1, had 4,846,000 average viewers with a growth of 71% compared to the first passage of last year.
It is common thoughts in the Italian broadcast world that such agreements are a good result, since as a whole they bring more public interested in the events; and this just like it occurred in England, where BSkyB shared tv rights with BBC TV according to the same scheme in force between Rai and Sky (9 GPs live in common, and 10 exclusively live on Sky with the first race free to air on Rai, at least 3 hours after the end of the race). The average audience total raised by the Melbourne Grand Prix, in fact, considering only the direct integral of the race and new propositions Rai and Sky, sums up to nearly six million viewers, compared to 2,800,000 last year. Sky Italy, who had recently suffered a general decrease in their subscribers, declares a renewed interest from the audience which reflects in commercial and advertising revenues. Beyond 80% of subscribers, to the Sports package are said to have seen the race, and the 47% of them used more than a channel, enjoying the 9 screen interactivity.
Besides on 25th March 11.150.571 unique viewers followed the channels of Sky Italy. Between 9 AM and midday, during the exclusive live broadcast of Formula 1 Malesia second world GP they summed up again to a record with 753.186 average total viewers (share of 7,78% and 1.342.421 unique viewers) on Sky Sport F1 HD and all interactive channels, with a recorded average growth of audience of 25% more than previous GP in Melbourne.
