In 2016, US-based Liberty Media bought the commercial rights to that most spendy of motor sports, Formula 1. In doing so, it promised to bring the 21st century to a racing series that, when it came to fan engagement, might as well have been trapped in 1995.

One of those changes has been a desire to offer a streaming service for fans, but, with the season-opening race taking place March 25—this Sunday—the service is conspicuous by its absence. The launch of F1 TV Pro, which would have cost around $8 to $12 for a race weekend, is now on hold.

Until this year, the lack of a streaming service was mostly down to a combination of apathy and contracts. Bernie Ecclestone, who ran the sport for decades, got there by buying up the broadcast rights to each race, eventually packaging them all together in a move that made him extremely wealthy and changed the sport into the polished, glossy, elitist thing it is today. And there was a time when Ecclestone even embraced progress. In the late 1990s, he launched a pay-per-view channel called F1 Digital+, which didn't take ad breaks and offered multiple video and audio feeds.

F1 Digital+ flopped, but, by the early 2000s, it had taken over responsibility for filming each race from the individual host-nation broadcasters. Any thought of innovation went out the window once F1 ended up in the hands of a private equity fund called CVC Capital Partners, however. CVC didn't want to do anything with F1 other than squeeze as much money out as possible. Ecclestone was kept in charge with a mission to charge as much for advertising, race hosting fees, and broadcast rights as possible.

And those broadcast contracts were the other impediment, because each one usually assigned local streaming rights to the same broadcaster who got the TV coverage; in the US that meant NBC, for example. Over the past year, Liberty has been trying to undo that as quickly as possible. A major factor in awarding the contract to ESPN for 2018 onward—which it did for free—was that NBC balked when told that was a requirement.

F1 TV

Liberty has been planning a two-tier OTT (over the top) service in English, French, Spanish, and German. There's a free service, called F1 TV Access, with similar features to the previous F1 mobile apps, minus the paywall: live timing and scoring, radio commentary, plus video highlights. The other tier is a subscription service called F1 TV Pro, restricted to regions where Liberty's contracts permit; among the markets Liberty announced at the beginning of March were "Germany, France, USA, Mexico, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, and much of Latin America."

The F1 TV Pro feed would include all F1 practice and qualifying sessions, as well as feeds from each driver's car, plus coverage of the support races. Both F1 TV Access and F1 TV Pro would have to be viewed via a Web browser, although mobile apps are apparently in the works for iOS, Android, and Amazon devices.

As far as we can tell, that's still the idea. But if you were hoping to try it out for the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, it's time to make a new plan. An F1 spokesperson told RaceFans' Dieter Rencken that the launch is on hold: "We will do a stress test/beta test session during the Melbourne weekend with the aim to be fully operational as soon as possible. It won't be a public test, it will be an internal test. We will have people spread in various locations in the world, testing the system and functionalities."

Not a good start to 2018

It is an unfortunate misstep for Liberty. Like many, I gave the company the benefit of the doubt in 2017, and I appreciate that it has worked for more than a year to undo some of the damage of the past decades. But wasn't the point of a media company taking over the sport supposed to be its competence in delivering media? "We need to stress test the servers" is something someone should have said months ago, not on the eve of the first race of the year. It's a fumble I couldn't see NASCAR making.

If you live in the US and want to catch the Australian Grand Prix, it will be live on ESPN2, with the race rebroadcast three times on Sunday (once on ESPN2, twice on ESPNEWS). The WatchESPN app will also carry the same video feed (the all-singing, all-dancing stuff will be unique to F1 TV Pro).