It’s Lights Out for F1 in the US
Image credit: James Moy
What’s Guenther’s favourite word? Who is Christian married to? Which fans love papaya?
If you know the answer to these questions, you’re a Formula 1 fan. And chances are you’re also a viewer of Netflix’s ‘Drive to Survive’, currently in its fifth season with a sixth in production following the 2023 F1 calendar.
When US-based Liberty Media bought the rights to F1 in 2017, they moved swiftly to reshape the sport with a clear focus on tapping the largest global market where F1 had previously failed to launch: the United States. As a result, we now have an expanded calendar of races including three US locations, a digital strategy firing on all cylinders and, the masterstroke, Drive to Survive.
The show, developed by Liberty and sold into Netflix, with over 6.8 million viewers per season, has been instrumental in turning an elitist motorsport with a questionable reputation into an addictive hybrid of reality TV mixed with high-octane (literally) competition with the added frisson of genuine danger.
DTS has made stars of team principals like Guenther Steiner and rocketed previously unknown drivers to fame: Daniel Riccardo now has over 9m followers on both X and Instagram. It’s bequeathed us a new relentless superstar in Dutchman Max Verstappen and gifted us a whole new lexicon: P1, DNF, DRS and the dreaded porpoising.
In parallel, Formula 1 and the sport’s governing body, the FIA, has been refreshing the sport from within with the changes to race weekend formats, clearer regulations, more competitive budget caps and senior personnel changes all to make for more transparent, exciting racing. At the same time they have heavily invested in original digital content, including the well-respected and hugely enjoyable F1TV channel.
Alongside this, the sport has embraced new markets with an expanded global calendar of 24 races for 2024 and drivers joining from China, Japan, Australia, Mexico and USA, rookie Logan Sargeant. National support is a huge fan motivator so expect more representation on the grid in future, especially from Middle Eastern states. And look for the gender hegemony to eventually fall: female drivers are catching up, literally.
These changes have proved transformative, increasing engagement and changing the demographics of the F1 viewership. According to a 2021 YouGov study, 26% of DTS viewers are new to F1 and 63% watch at least three episodes in a row, 18-29yr olds make up 31% of the audience and 46% is female. These statistics represent valuable new cohorts of engaged viewers for both the sport and its sponsors.
New attendance records have been set at tracks across the globe and live viewership on broadcast partners has increased year on year. The 2020 Abu Dhabi race holds the peak F1 viewership record of 108.7m and the cumulative TV audience for 2022 was 1.54bn, with an average of 70m viewers per race.
This November sees Las Vegas rejoin the F1 calendar for a night race along the famous Strip, with F1 itself acting as promoter of the race; a role usually outsourced. Liberty have also invested in property in Las Vegas, locating several senior executives there, potentially marking Vegas as a future global home of this famously peripatetic sport.
Unsurprisingly, due to this surge of interest, brands are keen to get involved with both Audi and Ford joining in 2026, Dorilton Capital, another US company, investing in the Williams team, a consortium including stars Ryan Reynolds and Michael B Jordan taking a stake in Alpine F1 and brands such as Oracle, AWS, Salesforce and INEOS all joining the F1 juggernaut. The cars and the drivers’ suits remain a blizzard of logos, graphic testimony to the marketing power of the sport.
It's this appeal to major brands that has seen MISSION Group invest in their global sports and entertainment collective, Mongoose Group by expanding Influence Sports & Media, into the US with an initial office in New York. Led by Dirk De Vos, a veteran Heineken, Diageo and Unilever marketer who has lived in the US for the last 15 years, Influence Sports is ideally placed to offer expertise in sports marketing as well as an in-depth understanding of the North American market. De Vos said: “It is the perfect time to open a US office, with Formula 1 becoming a huge attraction with such a rapidly growing and diverse fan base. Influence Sports not only offer F1 expertise but also soccer, pro-cycling and sailing, amongst many other international sports marketing platforms.”
This expertise will no doubt prove invaluable because several sports are hoping to copy the F1 playbook. Currently there are shows following professional golf, tennis, surfing and cycling, all produced by DTS showrunner James Gay-Rees, employing the same slick editing and behind-the-scenes machinations.
If those shows can do for their sports what DTS continues to do for F1, sponsors will be delighted. And we can all look forward to a new tranche of sports celebrities we’d never heard of becoming household names.
As Guenther might say “#@$%$%!”.
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