F1 Needs More Than Speed to Boost Its US Audience
For viewership to really rocket, the sport could use an American driver.
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
No sport saw a bigger boost in popularity during the pandemic than Formula One. That’s mainly thanks to the Netflix docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive. But the show, now in its seventh season, gets less compelling the more one guy keeps winning. Max Verstappen, of the Netherlands, has won four consecutive drivers’ championships. Prior to his streak, Lewis Hamilton, of Britain, had won six of seven titles.
It’s impossible to directly correlate Drive to Survive’s popularity with viewership for races. But in 2022, F1 averaged 1.19 million viewers per race, according to Nielsen and ESPN, F1’s broadcast partner. The numbers inched lower in 2023 and lower still in 2024. The most popular race, the Miami Grand Prix, averaged 3.1 million viewers (a record for an F1 event) last year. This year the number was about 30% lower, though that still makes it the year’s most viewed race.