No pay TV deal for ’critical market’ Germany

Germany’s long-running pay-TV deal has ended.

Although Sky is thriving in the British and Italian markets, the broadcaster will no longer have rights to the sport for 2018 and beyond.

"We could not reach the goals that we set ourselves for the negotiations," Sky Deutschland boss Carsten Schmidt told SID news agency.

It means pundit Marc Surer, a former F1 driver, is without a job.

"Ultimately it was probably a financial story but it was also about exclusivity and that was not present after the new agreement with RTL," he told Speed Week.

Surer explained that pay TV networks want to offer more than free-to-air broadcasters, but that was not the case with the new arrangement between Liberty and RTL.

"Germany is a critical market," Liberty’s F1 commercial boss Sean Bratches told Auto Motor und Sport. "They are not ready to break from free TV.

"I was born in Berlin and a lot of my family lives in Germany," he explained. "My uncle is an avid formula one fan and he would have been pretty angry with me if we went too far."