I think it's a consciousness thing with football, in the UK anyway. It's a part of the culture. It was a part of the culture when pretty much the only things to do were work down the pits, race whippets and go to the pub for a pint (ok, I'm slightly taking the proverbial, but you know what I mean) before you had all these other mega-sports and other diversions.
It was a part of the culture before TV and TV has in ways merely enhanced that (pre-Premier League) with almost saturation-level coverage, and further enhanced whilst also detracting (post-Premier League/Sky, which has "gentrified" the game somewhat and lifted it into the stratoshpere whilst making it a bit too exclusive, in many ways).
Even post-Premier League there is still loads of other football on TV, be it FA Cups or (until relatively recently) Champions League or World Cups or highlights of the PL or the FL or Scottish games.
And if it's not on TV there's any number of top-division and lower division and even lower division and amateur and even junior games that you can go to and still remain involved in the sport. With the exception of the PL in recent years people still feel deep connections to it, clubs are part of communities, it still feels like the people's game. It's generally cheap to go to a game: follow your team and get back home in time to watch some coverage of the rest late at night. The sport kind of gets away with it in that respect: in many ways football continues to be a massive success despite pay-TV, not because of it. It's entrenched, it's almost ubiquitous.
In contrast, F1's success is built almost entirely on television. The sport only really expanded properly post the 1970's when everything became standardised and televised regularly and predictably. The sport has always engendered a distance between it and its fans because it is hyper-expensive and uber-professional and glamorous. F1 has never been and will never be "the people's sport". Doesn't mean it's better or worse, it's going to be part of the attraction. But TV is the oxygen of F1. And though it's popular (currently), it's still a relatively niche sort of popular in comparison to football. Going exclusive to Sky is going to hurt it in ways it would never hurt football.
Originally Posted by DanManF1:
“Did you not watch last weekend's race?”
Last weekend's race was good, but I personally don't kid myself that it was a mega epic one. To some extent it merely contained all the things you need to tick off for good coverage in the media.