ESPN\u2019s final season of Formula 1 broadcasts set a record.<\/p>\n
The network said Wednesday it averaged 1.3 million viewers per race over the course of the 2025 season. Sunday\u2019s finale in Abu Dhabi \u2014 won by four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen as Lando Norris finished third to win his first championship \u2014 averaged 1.5 million viewers.<\/p>\n
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The previous ESPN season record was 1.21 million in 2022. That season was Verstappen\u2019s second title and came on the heels of the most dramatic F1 season in recent memory as Verstappen won his first title with a last-lap overtake of Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi following an incredibly controversial officiating decision. Hamilton and Verstappen entered the final race of the season four years ago tied in the points standings as many American fans had become familiar with Formula 1 thanks to Netflix<\/a>\u2019s \u201cDrive to Survive\u201d docu-series.<\/p>\n To put the growth of F1 in the United States in context, ESPN started airing Sky Sports\u2019 broadcasts of F1 in 2018. That first season, ESPN averaged just over 550,000 viewers per race. The audience has nearly tripled in the seven seasons since, and the last four seasons have averaged over 1 million viewers per race.<\/p>\n In that time, F1 has added two more races in the United States to go along with the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. The Miami Grand Prix was added in 2022 and the Las Vegas Grand Prix was added a season ago.<\/p>\n F1 is now consistently the second-most watched motorsport in the United States behind NASCAR\u2019s Cup Series. And the size of the series\u2019 TV audiences are getting closer and closer. NASCAR\u2019s championship race at Phoenix \u2014 which started at 3 p.m. ET on Nov. 2, averaged 2.78 million viewers. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix started at 8 a.m. ET.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Cup Series viewership declined 14% in 2025 as a handful of races were held on Amazon Prime for the first time. In 2018, NASCAR\u2019s season finale at Homestead averaged 4.15 million viewers. And that number was down 32% from the audience that watched the finale in 2016.<\/p>\n But F1 now runs the risk of seeing its viewership drop like NASCAR\u2019s in 2026 and beyond. The series\u2019 broadcast rights are heading to Apple TV, as Apple outbid ESPN and others. The five-year deal is worth $140 million per year. ESPN was paying approximately $85 million per season and has a much wider audience base than Apple does. While ESPN is included in nearly all cable and streaming TV<\/a> packages, Apple TV is $13 a month as a standalone streaming subscription.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Its reach is a fraction of ESPN\u2019s. And that\u2019s been evident with the disaster that was MLS Season Pass. Apple obtained the exclusive rights to every MLS broadcast and charged an extra fee starting in 2023. The package never took off and Apple announced at the end of the 2025 season that MLS games would be shown to anyone with a basic Apple TV subscription.<\/p>\n F1 races will also not have an extra fee attached, and Apple TV subscribers will also get access to F1 TV, the series\u2019 app that allows fans to watch in-car cameras from every driver in the field along with live timing and scoring.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s a near certainty that viewership will drop for F1 in 2026. But by just how much? A small dip can be easily made up. But if moving behind the Apple paywall dissuades many casual fans who got hooked on \u201cDrive to Survive\u201d from continuing to watch Grand Prix races, there\u2019s a very real chance F1\u2019s growth curve could soon flatten out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN\u2019s final season of Formula 1 broadcasts set a record. The network said Wednesday it averaged 1.3 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[15915,49,48,1161,578,576,577,932,1885,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-339798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-apple-tv","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-espn","12":"tag-f1","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-lewis-hamilton","16":"tag-max-verstappen","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}