Here’s What Cord-Cutters Can Do to Follow Formula One

Lewis Hamilton is going for a three-peat. Ferrari is looking to end years of Mercedes dominance. And Fernando Alonso is just trying to finish a race!

But in the US, unless you subscribe to cable, watching the drama of the upcoming Formula One season unfold live is all but impossible.

The 2016 season begins in the middle of the night (Eastern Daylight Time) on Sunday, March 20, with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. As has been the case for the past three years, NBC holds the US broadcast rights, and typically airs the races live on cable channels NBC Sports or CNBC. This is great for fans who happen to subscribe to cable, with the biggest inconvenience being remembering to set your DVR for when you don't want to stay up until the wee hours.

For fans who happen to be cord-cutters, however, things are a lot less rosy. Only four races, including the Monaco Grand Prix in May and the United States Grand Prix in October, will be broadcast live on NBC, and will thus be viewable to anyone within range of an NBC affiliate and who also has an over-the-air antenna. Beyond these races, however, cord-cutters are out of luck—unless they're willing to flout copyright laws, that is.

"The F1 business model has no real room for streaming," Joe Saward, a reporter who's been covering Formula One for nearly 30 years, told Motherboard. In his view, Formula One primarily caters to middle aged men who are used to following the sport on TV. The organization, he added, is doing "nothing at all" to cater to young people who are now used to streaming much of their entertainment.

This puts cord-cutters, or people who've said goodbye to paying the likes of Comcast or Time Warner Cable an average of $99 per month, in a bit of a bind.

For these folks, their options are essentially to either forego watching most of the races live (boo!), risk wading into a sea of malware looking for illegal livestreams (ack!), or use a commercial VPN to pretend to be located in a country (like Australia) where the broadcaster does offer free livestreams (complicated!).

When contacted by Motherboard, NBC did stress that, just like last year, all of the races will be livestreamed on the NBC Sports Live Extra app, which is available on most major platforms including Android, iOS, Roku, and the web. The catch, of course, is that you need a cable TV login to watch the streams.

While the situation may seem dire for cord-cutting F1 fans—and it is!—there is one more option for Spanish speakers. Univision Deportes, a Spanish-language cable network that airs the top US and Mexican soccer leagues, is available via Sling TV, the $20 per month streaming service that's compatible with Android, iOS, Roku, and PC/Mac. Keep in mind that you'll need to pay $5 more per month for the "Sports Extra" package to get Univision Deportes. Speaking Spanish so you can understand the color commentary, which is vital to understand what's going on during the race, is also highly recommended.

So what comes next? NBC's agreement to broadcast Formula One in the US expires next season, opening up the possibility for someone else to swoop in and buy the rights. And while I've seen no specific talk regarding Formula One, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook have reportedly considered buying up the rights for other sports, namely the NFL. Heck, T-Mobile just scored a deal with MLB so its subscribers can get one free year of MLB.tv Premium!

In the meantime, though, cord-cutting fans will either need to make peace with limited live access to the sport, brave the wild west of dodgy online streams, or brush up on their Spanish.

Or they can just bug their parents for a cable TV login. Not that I'd know anything about that.

Update: A helpful Motherboard reader from CutCableToday.com just reminded me that Sony's PlayStation Vue, which is similar to Sling TV, is now available nationwide, and can be used to watch NBC Sports, no shenanigans required. Good!