YOU CANNOT BELIEVE IT!

News that the BBC are no longer going to be screening MotoGP has gone over like a lead balloon in many quarters. It hasn't been helped that the new broadcaster has never actually done this sort of thing before. It is, after all, a telephone company and one which is not universally popular, often accused of poor service and high charges.

But as from next year, BT, will be taking on the giants of television via its broadband network where it is, by far, the biggest in Britain. And, according to the PR blurb, it will be free.

It has been known for some time that the BBC was unlikely to renew its contract with Dorna as the organisation is under some cost pressure and whatever enthusiasm it might have held for MotoGP seemed to be diminishing.

It was a particularly valuable contract for Dorna because the BBC paid them a lot of money and, as a "free-to-air" broadcaster, the audience of two to three million was far higher than a subscription channel like Sky which also carried Eurosport. And the BBC brand carried a lot of value.

So what happens now? It looks like Eurosport, despite their big-time US shareholder, have been outmanoeuvred or simply outbid. This is British Eurosport only because it is assumed the main network will continue to carry all the MotoGP rounds.

BT are promising to carry Moto3 and Moto2 live and replicate the kind of coverage that Sky give to Formula 1. We can be certain they will be trying hard and a new look for what has become a fairly tired formula will be welcome. But they will have to work hard to avoid counting the audience in thousands rather than millions.

Perhaps the most interesting piece of theatre will be the jostling for position of the presenters and commentators. Will Jules and Toby survive? Will Keith Huewen be making a return now that Sky are focussing their efforts entirely on F1? The one certainty must be Steve Parrish who, generally speaking, seems to know what he is talking about...

THE OLD DOG AND BONE

Did you ever imagine that you'd be watching motorbike racing on the telephone? Well you are now courtesy of BT which, in the good old days when half of industry was owned by the government, was part of the Post Office.

In those days, when the only way of receiving a letter or making a telephone call, was via this nationalised monstrosity and from a fixed point in a building. Or one of those famous red telephone boxes. And via a piece of wire. The idea of walking around talking to someone the other side of the world on something the size of a fag packet was the stuff of science fiction.

Well, things seem to have moved on even further. The old fixed line owner/ operator has had its' monopoly challenged, it has to share its network and mobile is everything. Even though it has benefitted hugely from the growth of the Internet and was able to expand the capacity of its network to cope with a fantastic growth in demand for broadband it was being attacked by global competitors. Something had to be done.

The best form of defence, they say, is attack. So Britain's BT is taking on the daddy of them all, Rupert Murdoch's Sky television. And the battleground is sport, specifically football, which is one of the few things viewers appear to be prepared to pay for and is the bedrock of SKYs proposition. Risky - others have tried and failed.

But in the words of Baldrick, BT have a cunning plan. Just as Murdoch changed the television world with satellite transmission, the growth of cable and a piece of technological trickery which enabled the capacity of telephone lines to be increased offers huge opportunity to the owners of those lines - television via the Internet.

Acquire content and offer it as part of a package to your existing telephone and broadband customers. Free! Pretty compelling stuff. Of course, you may have to pay extra for HD or to hook it up to other sports channels.

The battle is joined.

WELSH RAREBIT

In Bikesport News last week, Editor Miller was pondering on the future of world championship races in the UK with both Silverstone and Donington being seen as less than certainties when contracts are offered for next year while Jonathan Palmer of MSVR is unwilling/unable to stand the cost.

The plan to build a circuit in Wales has been derided in certain quarters but it has certainly attracted the attention of Dorna. Carmelo Ezpeleta paid a visit earlier this year and was complementary about the vision. It was at this time that he was discussing another sort of vision with his new UK broadcast partner BT.

Plans for the circuit, which include a motor sports complex, have not yet been approved but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Welsh government, anxious to put their country on the world sporting map, is more enthusiastic than many of the more cynically minded think. They did, after all, spend millions bringing a golf tournament to the principality a couple of years ago.

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