After this year’s season, RTL will end its live transmissions of Formula 1 races, which the German broadcaster has been showing on free-TV since 1991.

“The competition for the TV rights has changed, the market has partly overheated and thus left the quite ambitious, yet economically justifiable framework that we have set for ourselves,” said RTL managing director Jörg Graf. “We will now focus all our energy, passion and excitement on football as the number one TV sport and our recently acquired rights package.”