Formula One is enjoying boom times in North America. Since the acquisition of the commercial rights by Liberty Media in 2016 in just nine years the sport has more than doubled its US audience. 

The advent of Netflix Drive to Survive saw huge numbers of spots fans convert to Formula One and despite the fickle nature of US TV audiences, the upward trend in numbers tuning in is impressive.

The impact on new fans from F1 The Movie is yet unknown, but the Brad Pitt film is now reported to have broken the actor’s personal record for his highest grossing film at the box office. The latest figures suggests $545m in earnings from around the world which surpasses 2013’s World War Z, the previous highest performing film starring Pitt.

 

 

 

A first with Hungarian GP F1 audience

The bench mark for motorsports fans in the USA is NASCAR, which is way more popular than North America’s premier open wheel racing series, Indycar. F1 has been consistently narrowing the gap to its main racing rival across the pond with the difference in the TV audience numbers facing below 1 million for the first time.

The Hungarian Grand Prix averaged 1.22m on ESPN and whilst not quite reaching the heights of 2022’s 1.25m, this was an eleven percent improvement o last year. In 2025 F1 has recorded year on year increases in viewership at all but ironically the Miami Grand Prix.

This year the average viewership for the races to date has been 1.36m, a significant improvement on the 1.22, at the same stage last season. For European races the average is 1.4m which is easily the biggest audience since ESPN acquired the US F1 rights back in 2018.

For the first time this year, the Hungarian Grand Prix saw the US audience for F1 within 1m of those who watched NASCAR. Whilst this happened four times in 2024, it was much later in the season. NASCAR is suffering a worrying decline for its promoters as the viewers tuning in to watch the Iowa Cup Series race fell to 2.17m. In 2024 this was 2.7m, although the race was held before the summer holiday period.

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NACAR suffering popularity decline

The series is averaging 2.73m viewers and has three races remaining in its regular season before the ‘playoffs’ begin. This means the average for the regular season will almost certainly come in under 3m for the first time on record.

Formula One suffered a similar dramatic decline in its audiences between 2008 and 2016. Numbers fell by around a third as the sport increasingly moved too pay-per-view TV channels. They finally stabilised at 400m in 2016 but have grown year on year ever since.

At that time the US TV audience averaged a mere 482,000 across the twenty race weekend schedule, with NBC broadcasting for some 155 hours. This was the year when digital streaming began to have an impact with more than 37 million minutes of F1 watched. This was up 231% on the previous seasons numbers with four races exceeding 2 million streams in Canada, Belgium, Brazil and Abu Dhabi.

The gap between NASCAR and F1 has been narrowing from race to race this season, despite McLaren dominating with eleven Grand Prix wins from fourteen. Whilst the US F1 TV audience numbers are always the ones to hit the headlines, the global viewership makes them pale into insignificance.

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F1 viewership grew 11% in 2024

F1’s fanbase in 2024 grew eleven percent to a whopping 826.5m, some 90m increase on the previous season. A significant part of the increase has driven by a big uptick in the Chinese fanbase who after years of being off the calendar saw the Shanghai event return with home born talent Zhou Guanyu.

There was also a spike in South America during the latter part of the season, as Argentinian driver Franco Colapinto completed nine race weekends for the Williams team.

Despite all the good news from the states, Formula One is considering a bid from Apple TV which is reported to be worth around $150m a year. This is expected to be significantly higher than the current Disney owned ESPN broadcaster is prepared to offer, but the risk of putting the sport completely behind this paywall is unknown.

ESPN has been broadcasting the F1 series since 2018 when NBC decided to pull out of their $4m a deal for exclusive licensing. The rights for 2018 were acquired at no cost, with Liberty Media keen to increase the US viewership rather than maximise revenue. Following the success of Drive to Survive, the network agreed a $5m a year deal which ran from 2020 through to 2022.

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The risk of signing with Apple TV+

For 2023, F1 decided the discounted offer was at an end, with a new contract worth $75m that year and rising to $90m by 2025. The difficulty for US broadcasters is that the time differences are significant with European race weekends being aired between six and nine o’clock in the mornings across the different US time zones.

The five Grand Prix which take place in the America’s are broadcast at the time of the US based motor racing series, but when in Asia and Australia the time is either late at night or early in the morning.

Apple is no novice at sport’s broadcasting with deals currently in place to broadcast Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball on Apple TV+. The deal to air Friday night baseball exclusive is currently with $85m annually for a seven year timespan, while Major League Baseball is for a decade and valued at a total of $2.5bn.

With Formula One biting the bullet in 2023 and upping the US hosting fee from $5 to $70m, its fair to say they are more confident now in the value of the rights and are likely to sign up with Apple+ for somewhere in the region of $150-180m a year for 2026 and beyond.

 

 

 

Formula One is at risk of losing much of its back story which creates drama and entertainment for the fans as in recent times the journalistic integrity of those covering the sport is being brought into disrepute. The FIA press conferences, once a spicy affair in the days of Bernie Ecclestone, are now cosy occasions where the drivers face little challenge from those present.

The questions at these occasions are often anaemic and lacking any penetrative investigation. The drivers are more skilled in their PR management often answering a different question from the one they were asked.

There is a cosy feeling about the press who follow the F1 circuit around the world and at times almost a fear of asking difficult questions. It’s as the sports writers upset an individual or a team, they will be blacklisted in future…. READ MORE