Initial reactions to Sky Sports UK FEED ON ESPN/ESPN2
The best part is no commercials and that ESPN must not have realized that there is no score crawl beneath the picture...it's just straight Sky video feed. I suspect that will change. Also, ESPN just announced that they are adding Sky's pre-race show, don't know about post race analysis, podium interview, etc.---find out tomorrow I guess.
I've already heard the commentators over the years so that was a known quantity for me. The video is world feed so I guess that's pretty much the same and I don't know if the graphics are new for 2018 or Sky, but they'll do. As an American I like the British dry humor...NBC was 3/4 British so I'm used to that particular rythm of the broadcast.
I watched all three practices and qualifying and it seems Sky is McLaren and Williams heavy among the seven teams that make up the pack. They had Horner on from the pitwall, but did they interview anyone else? Missed hearing from any other teams or driver. I'm used to periodic interviews on NBC.
They never acknowledged the US viewers once that I heard. Maybe it's petty, but why not recognize the broadcasting partnership with ESPN?
The biggest negative is that they had almost no technical explanations or interesting tidbits about the different teams. Nobody wants to get a graduate level engineering lecture, but they didn't give anything to the viewers. Everytime I watched NBC I learned something. Their broadcast made me a smarter and better F1 fan. Sky hasn't done that yet.
Remembering where we came from upon the ESPN announcement, literally no information on the broadcast, I think it will be ok. We now get the Sky coverage of all practices, qualifying, pre-race and race. Its on either TV or streaming and replays on ESPN3 for everything if you miss it. Originally we thought it was just going to be some ESPN hack fumbling around just for the races. So, the US viewers are getting a decent amount of coverage. I'm way more optimistic than I was, but ESPN sucks generally.