A new documentary series telling the story of Formula 1 through the eyes of Bernie Ecclestone will premiere later this month.
The series, called Lucky! will air on multiple streaming platforms including the UK and Ireland on Discovery+. Manish Pandey, who produced the movie Senna, is the man behind bringing the story to life Lucky!
The series features many of Ecclestone’s thoughts from exclusive interviews with Lucky! as well as a wide range of archival material from the official Formula 1 vault.
The documentary series began production in 2020 and I am happy to confirm that I have been working with Manish and production company Jiva Maya throughout 2022 to add another layer of narrative to the series.
Formula One has evolved significantly during Ecclestone’s tenure as a leader in the sport, including on the broadcasting front, with the television revolution.
To help the team tell Lucky! In history, I collected worldwide viewing data in conjunction with historical UK TV programming data.
Attempting to calculate F1’s global historical viewership has been difficult, but has been made possible by the hours of research viewers can see in the second half Lucky! from the fifth to the eighth episode.
Combining publicly available data (both for the season and for individual races) with other insights such as data on population and total TV penetration allowed us to present a reasonable trend over the past four decades.
The trend shows how F1’s popularity boomed in the 1980s, stabilizing after Ayrton Senna’s death before rising again under Michael Schumacher’s reign at the top.
In addition, I selected more than 2,000 data points from BBC genome servicecombining them with Radio Times historical TV listings from the BBC’s Written Archives Center and The Library of Birmingham.
The research allowed us to estimate for the first time how the exposure of free-to-air Formula 1 TV in the UK has changed over the last four decades. Stay tuned to the Motorsport Broadcasting website for a more in-depth analysis of this front.
From just 40 minutes of live coverage of the race in 1988 to almost 3 hours on average ten years later in the UK, Lucky! shows how the sport has changed over the decades.
For me personally, this is the first time whenever This is how I contributed – and was recognized – to a TV documentary about Formula 1, something I never thought I’d say.
It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with Manish and the team on it Lucky! project in 2022 and I would like to thank them very much for their kind words of encouragement throughout.
Lucky! Premieres in the UK on Discovery+ on Tuesday 27p December and internationally on platforms including DAZN, Viaplay and ESPN LATAM.
Support the ongoing costs of Motorsports Stream by making a donation via PayPal. If you wish to reproduce the content of this article in any form, please contact Motorsport Broadcasting first.
