{"id":91207,"date":"2025-08-23T12:45:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T12:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/91207\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T12:45:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T12:45:14","slug":"zak-brown-highlights-why-f1-struggled-to-breach-us-market-before-liberty-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/91207\/","title":{"rendered":"Zak Brown highlights why F1 struggled to breach US market before Liberty Media\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

McLaren CEO Zak Brown has outlined three reasons why Formula 1<\/a> struggled to find a foothold in the United States before Liberty Media\u2019s takeover.<\/p>\n

F1 was a flying circus, and Bernie Ecclestone was the ringmaster until Liberty Media acquired the commercial rights of the sport from the Briton in 2017. <\/p>\n

And since then, F1 has seen a stark rise in popularity in the US. <\/p>\n

But before this, the sport struggled to capture the American market, despite having somewhat of a lukewarm reputation in the States. <\/p>\n

Brown reflected on that period and broke down the three main reasons why F1 struggled. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne, we never really found a permanent location, dating back to the \u201970s,\u201d he explained on David Novak\u2019s podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were Long Beach, then you were Watkins Glen, then you were Dallas, then you were a parking lot in Vegas for two years, then you were Phoenix.\u201d<\/p>\n

This meant that the paddock could never really call a single place within the US home. <\/p>\n

That said, while circuits like Spa-Francorchamps and Monza became a staple in F1, US tracks were quick to lose their appeal owing to how sporadically they appeared on the calendar. <\/p>\n

\u201cThen you took five, six, seven, eight years off,\u201d continued the American. <\/p>\n

\u201cThen we came back to Indianapolis. Then we had this \u2018tiregate,\u2019 as we called it, so we didn\u2019t put on a good show. Then we disappeared again.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to have any sport be popular in North America if you\u2019re not there or you have no date or location equity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"McLarenZak Brown has credited Liberty Media for F1\u2019s growth in the US<\/p>\n

How Liberty Media changed F1\u2019s narrative in the US<\/p>\n

Since 2012, the Circuit of the Americas in Texas has become the focal point of F1\u2019s operations in the US. <\/p>\n

With Liberty Media, the calendar now hosts three Grands Prix in the Country with the addition of Miami in 2022 and Las Vegas a year later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also were a sport that was very exclusive, or perceived to be very exclusive and not very inclusive,\u201d Brown admitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where, when Liberty came in and acquired the sport, they went, \u2018Wow, the sport\u2019s huge, but it doesn\u2019t really engage with its fan base like the NBA\u2019s, the NFL\u2019s, the MLBs, even the Premier Leagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that was fine for a long time, but now we\u2019re in an era of engagement, not awareness. We weren\u2019t engaging with our fans. We weren\u2019t letting them inside. We were \u2018look, don\u2019t touch.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The American mass media conglomerate brought all the elements to F1 that the sport had been lacking, compared to the likes of global franchises such as the NFL and NBA.<\/p>\n

Netflix was quick to latch onto the sport\u2019s rising star and, in the end, only propelled it to further heights.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Liberty bought it and you had Netflix come in, we started kind of letting people see behind the curtains, people went, \u2018Wow, this sport\u2019s awesome. I\u2019ve never seen that before. I\u2019ve never been close to it before.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen over time, we got three races, starting with Austin, which is one of the best grands prix on our calendar.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you went from being not here and exclusive to being here, inclusive, and very focused on engagement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what Formula 1 has learned, and is continuing to learn, is that sport is entertainment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll hear sometimes in Formula 1 where we go, \u2018No, we\u2019re not entertainment.\u2019 It\u2019s like, well, as far as I\u2019m concerned, if you buy a ticket to sit in a seat to watch a movie, a motor race, a baseball game, a rock concert, a fireworks show, you\u2019re going to be entertained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the sport has now embraced that there\u2019s an entertainment aspect to what we do, and the fans are responding accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 Why the FIA isn\u2019t worried about lap times with the 2026 F1 regulation overhaul<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren CEO Zak Brown has outlined three reasons why Formula 1 struggled to find a foothold in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[14969,49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-91207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-brown","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91207","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=91207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}