Formula 1 has reportedly taken over control of broadcasting the Monaco Grand Prix, starting with this year’s edition on Sunday, May 28.
The Principality has long enjoyed a special relationship with F1, which recognised the importance that the Monaco GP has had to the sport. In return for hosting the ‘Crown Jewel’ of the F1 Calendar, the event organiser, the Automobile Club of Monaco, has had fewer fees to pay, while also keeping its own broadcasting arrangement.
The responsibility of broadcasting the race belongs to F1 at every other circuit on the calendar, but the ACM has always broadcast the Monaco GP through Tele Monte Carlo. With an uncertain future on the horizon, the organisers signed a deal with F1 to secure the GP until 2025, while also giving up broadcasting rights to F1.
Such a change to the Monaco deal would be deemed unthinkable when the event peaked in prestige and power. However, the sport is no longer owned by Bernie Ecclestone. Instead, the American mass media company Liberty Media now call the shots.
Since the Liberty Media takeover in 2016 the race calendar began to grow, swelling to allow for more races in the Middle East and in the land of the brave and the free, where the sport has grown exponentially. With races in places like Miami and Las Vegas appearing in an already packed schedule, there is less time, and less importance given to the crown jewel of the F1 calendar.
As the race calendar has grown, so have the cars. Visitors to the Historic Monaco Grand Prix will be able to see the cars grow in size over the different decades that make up the race categories of the day. The open wheelers of the 60s look tiny in comparison to the cars of the 90s and early 2000s, which in turn look tiny compared to the lengthy cars of today. The same level of racing and number of overtakes cannot be expected, just as the narrow streets cannot widen with the cars, but complaints about the state of the race itself have nonetheless begun to be voiced more frequently after each edition of the event.
There have also been complaints about the quality of the broadcasting of the race such as during the 2021 edition when the cameras cut away from an on-track battle to a replay of Lance Stroll going over a corner, and during the 2022 Monaco F1 Grand Prix, which saw 12 overtakes, of which only two were shown on live broadcast thanks to some remarkableTV direction.
NEWS.MC reached out to the press section of the Auromobile Club for comment.
Featured image: Ayrton Senna