ESPN intends to keep its coverage of F1 races commercial free for the duration of the '18 season, according to ESPN Exec VP/Programming & Scheduling Burke Magnus. ESPN switched to the format for Sunday morning's Bahrain GP, the second race of the season, after an outcry during the opener from Australia over issues cutting in and out of break while using a Sky Sports feed, which led to an out-of-sync feel. Magnus said that he worked arduously over the last two weeks to arrange the new format, which is highly unusual for auto racing broadcasts on U.S. TV and took a host of approvals, among other arrangements. ESPN, which is not believed to be paying a rights fee to F1 for the programming and is relying on a Sky Sports feed, arranged for its presenting sponsor of F1 this year -- car care product Mothers’ Polish -- to be the advertiser during the race by showing its logo periodically in the upper right hand corner of the screen. ESPN also extended coverage after the race to fit in other advertisers. After being sharply criticized during the season opener on social media, the move to go ad free has been hailed by F1 fans on social media. Magnus said, “It was fairly complicated but it was necessary. I was of the opinion after the first week where it was abundantly clear that getting in and out of breaks using the Sky feed was going to be clunky -- we knew we had to do something that was pretty drastic. The cleanest opportunity was to go straight for keeping the race action commercial free. Rather than putting a band-aid on a bad situation, we decided to go for the full fix.”
