Honda flew the nest at the end of last season which has prompted ITV to seek out a new sponsor ahead of the F1 season starting next Sunday.

Initial reports indicated that a figure of around £5million was anticipated to be required to claim the rights however the rumours are that Sony’s new contract will only see ITV claim £3million - still a pretty penny.   No doubt ITV were hoping the Lewis-factor would have loosened the pursestrings in boardooms around the globe, however it was not to be.

So why would a company want to associate themselves with F1?

It’s not too hard to see why past sponsors chose this option -people like Shell who are longtime sponsors of Ferrari, Toyota and Honda who are both manufacturers with teams in the sport but why Sony?

Well I suppose the audience of this show will fit in with the target demographic a company like Sony will be aiming for to try and sell their desirable technological products such as the PlayStation 3, Vaio laptops and the like.

ITV’s brand partnership director himself said the following on this topic :

It is fantastic to be working with Sony to help them make use of the many opportunities across our broadcast, interactive and online content to illustrate their market leading HD range of products. Gary Knight

So the main reason is to promote their High Definition TVs, Bluray disc players, camcorders etc?  This would be an excellent idea, if only ITV would actually transmit the races in HD format so that people who have actually gone out and bought an HD television from Sony can see it to their advantage!

So can we take it from this that ITV are to start broadcasting in HD any time soon?