F1 TV

Delayed F1 TV Pro to arrive in time for the Spanish Grand Prix

2018 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by

Formula One Management has confirmed its delayed F1 TV Pro service will arrive in time for the Spanish Grand Prix.

The service, which will allow fans in around 40 regions to stream live F1 coverage directly, was originally planned to arrive in time for the first race of the 2018 F1 season.

“Formula 1, the pinnacle of motor sport, will launch F1 TV in May, ahead of the Formula 1 2018 Gran Premio De Espana,” Formula One Management announced in a statement.

“Until that time, Formula 1 will continue to run a closed beta version of the service to a small subset of fans for viewing and testing during the upcoming Formula 1 2018 Chinese Grand Prix and Formula 1 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.”

“F1 TV will initially launch on desktop,” it added. “Apple, Android and Amazon Fire mobile and tablet devices will launch shortly thereafter.

“By summer, the service will also be available to fans on Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Apple TV.”

F1’s officially connectivity partner Tata will distribute the content. The services’ systems will be run by NBC Sports’ Playmaker Media and iStreamPlanet. The F1 TV web app will be created and delivered by Ostmodern and payment processing and identity management handled by CSG.

Read more about F1 TV

Browse all F1 TV articles

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

30 comments on “Delayed F1 TV Pro to arrive in time for the Spanish Grand Prix”

  1. an annual rate? I’d hope it’s a 75% discounted rate at this point. :)

  2. I’m in Australia, I’ll have to forgo F1 until F1TV arrives, I’d like to register for a reminder before it happens because I’ll probably have forgotten about F1 by then.

    1. That’s too bad. Hang in there Man.

    2. Unfortunately Australia isn’t in the initial countries where F1 live is offered- and there is no timeframe on when it will be :-(

  3. With ESPN F1 coverage here in the US (which comes with my cable package) having gone ad free, I’m not nearly as anxious to sign up for this as I was after first hearing about it. Probably still will though.

    1. I hear you, though, I am very interested in all the in car camera capability. The biggest problem I have is that I have to get up at crazy early mornings to see the coverage. At least with ESPN, I can record for later viewing. Any news regarding the new F1 streaming service being available “on demand”?

      1. ESPN is basically on demand. All the sessions are stored via Watch ESPN app and you can watch them all at later times. I can even go back and watch Bahrain sessions now.

    2. The big question there is: do we think it’ll remain ad-free? I’m interested in this service, but it’s useless til summer as I don’t want to watch on a laptop

    3. I’m amazed at the service you used to have with espn sports network. I’m so glad the UK didn’t embrace all them horrible infomercials during the grand prix. Bet you’re much happy you’re getting the sky coverage over there now?

  4. This is good news. I am running out of free trials to gain access to a weekend of ESPN.

    ESPN going commercial free was a happy surprise, but cost wise I still can’t justify the cost of subscribing when F1 is the only reason I would be purchasing a streaming package.

    1. The F1 TV cannot come soon enough. espn did not bother to show practice sessions last night.

      I did appreciate the uninterrupted Bahrain race broadcast, to be fair. The pressure from Liberty on espn must have been massive after all the complaints from the first race.

      1. @bullmello For future reference, P1 and P2 are being shown on their live streaming service, ESPN3.

        1. @schooner – Which by all rights I should be able to view since it is part of my att-uverse cable package. But, when signing into espn with my completely legit credentials for u-verse I get an error message claiming content not available or just a null/void error message. Same thing happened with nbc previously. ATT blames the carrier, the carriers blame ATT. Searched online for various remedies, no joy. I’m pretty sure it is something with ATT, but they claim otherwise and won’t lift a finger to help.

          1. How odd. This weekend I am trialing Directv Now, which if I understand correctly is owned by ATT. I watched FP1 last night (fell asleep before FP2 came on). I hate these huge media/communication conglomerates. Customer service is not their forte.
            I wish you luck in finding access to practices until F1 TV shows up.

          2. I had the same issues. I even couldn’t verify my android TV apps unless I activated them using Internet Explorer. Get IE and chances are your problems will resolve themselves with authentication.

      2. ESPN3 or WatchESPN works with the credentials from your cable package or streaming service. I am on my third free trial for streaming and entering the account logins into the WatchESPN app has worked to see FP1 and FP2. It’s ESPNews for FP3 that can be tricky if you don’t have the right level package.

        1. ESPNews is one main reason to switch to F1TV Pro, however you can watch ESPNews coverage on demand via ESPN3. You just can’t watch ESPNews feeds live if you don’t have the channel. I hope F1TV Pro gives you an option to use your own units. NBC had everything in MPH. Sky uses KPH.

  5. Do you know what would have been really useful here…. the actual date of the Spanish GP.

  6. Thanks thanks!! Finally I can stop watching crappy non official online streaming

    1. Nothing wrong with home streaming of. You’ve got a decent provider.

      1. I have 10mbits connection that’s enough for fast 1080p or 2k content or slow 4k … Most of the ilegal streams even on twitch.. they freeze a lot..

  7. I haven’t seen what happens if you have the audacity to visit, let’s say the Italian and British GPs. Does this mean that, having paid a valid subscription and the high price of a ticket, that your F1 TV will be blocked while you are at the circuit?

    1. in the countries where someone else has a contract for exclusive rights to F1, yes. That’s probably addressed in the terms of service agreement that no one will read, just like how Netflix offers different content in different countries for the same reason.

  8. I said Spain the soonest, that’s what they planned, it’s just what usually happens with such complicated streaming solutions. I said Spain but I also said I’m sure it’ll will be delayed further.

    1. you want a lollipop now?..

  9. 1st, very excited about this, but i have one concern. This weekend, the race and qualifying is at ~2am my time, and i’m not going to try to stay up and watch it live. When i wake up the morning after, I’ll watch the recording on my DVR with no worries about spoilers. The 2 attempts i made to stream it on NBC last year ended up with me seeing a headline of the results before i could get to the stream. If this service spoils the results for those of us that want to watch it delayed, it’ll be useless for me. Two easy ways to handle this.

    1. Don’t have F1 news on the home page before you get to the stream.
    2. Have some kind of No-Spoiler mode that blurs out results until after you watch the race.

    Keeping my fingers crossed this works out because if it’s as good as i’m hoping, that’s the end of cable TV for me.

    1. F1 announced that the less expensive F1 TV Access package has the F1 race archive and replays of the current season and that F1 TV Pro has all of the races live but it wasn’t clear if F1 TV Pro also includes the replay of the current season. I would assume that it was but I haven’t read anything definitive yet.

      There’s an art to avoiding spoilers. For me, it mean being very careful which channel my TV is tuned to when I turn it (i.e. avoid sports channels) and being VERY careful with what I suf to and which apps I’m using on my phone. Same thing with the popular TV shows, Game Of Thrones. Personally, I use the time between the race and watching a replay to take a vacation from all screens for a few hours. Spend some time in that thing out there, the REAL WORLD ;-).

  10. Hopefully we will be able to stream commentary of our choice at some point in the near future, because SkyF1 is spoiling the whole show for me.

    1. I’m going to be watching with the commentary off and get any crucial info from text updates from sites like this

  11. You don’t need a cable subscription for ESPN these days. There are streaming services like Sling that bundle 20 or so live TV channels, including ESPN, for approx $15-$20 month. Of course, you need to make sure that they include F1 races in any ESPN streaming.

Comments are closed.