F1 viewership analysis: Has the series cracked the US TV market?

When Formula One was acquired by American media giant Liberty in 2017, the first tentative steps of growth were always likely to be taken towards the US.

Those became confident strides as the series exploded in popularity, largely thanks to Netflix’s Drive to Survive docuseries, which became the gateway into the sport for many new fans, with the challenge of retaining this new-found audience falling predominantly on the broadcasters.

Of course, there are various touchpoints for fans to engage with Formula One, whether it be attending a Grand Prix or through social media, but watching the live action on television will continue to be the easiest – and most affordable – method of following a full season.

In the US, ESPN sensed an opportunity on the back of Liberty’s acquisition, snapping up the broadcast rights to Formula One from the 2018 season. To illustrate just how much the series’ stock has grown, the Disney-owned broadcaster agreed an initial deal worth around US$5 million per year, a far cry from the current contract which is valued at a reported US$90 million annually.

Before the series could think about growing its media rights revenue in the US, however, Formula One had to focus on ensuring enough people knew about it and where they could watch.

“When we first started out, [Formula One’s] key priority was exposure and growth in the US,” John Suchenski, senior director of programming and acquisitions for ESPN, tells BlackBook Motorsport.

“Clearly, we have accomplished that. Now, it’s how do we continue to take it to new levels? That’s where we’re trying out new things and working together and collaborating on new ideas and new approaches…I think it’s accurate to say that it has been a success.”

The data appears to back up that assessment, but there are multiple angles that must be considered to build a clearer picture of the current interest from the US TV audience.

Exponential growth from year one

The most straightforward metric is to compare viewership from the 2018 season with the current year, a statistic that emphasises the growth of the series in nearly seven years on ESPN.

Formula One averaged 539,190 viewers in 2018, a number that the series has fallen below just once this year. That race was the Japanese Grand Prix, which began at 1am ET and averaged 484,000 viewers.

The races in the Americas during the 2018 season offered a glimpse of the growing interest among the US audience, with Canada (967,000 viewers), Austin (881,000 viewers), and Mexico (769,000 viewers) delivering three of the four largest audiences from that year.

Not unlike audiences in other territories, the North American market responded to races being aired during primetime. In this context, it should be no surprise that Liberty moved to add further US races in Miami and Las Vegas as it sought to grow its American fanbase, create more glamorous events and make its Grands Prix more appealing to US brands.

However, it’s easy to point to the audience numbers for the North American races, which is why this article comes before this year’s US Grand Prix in Austin. The average US fan’s interest in the wider Formula One season is a far better indicator of the general feeling towards the series.

Of the 14 races this season that have a 2018 counterpart as a point of comparison, only five have failed to at least double their audience. Even then, the smallest increase is for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which has seen its audience grow 61 per cent since 2018.

Most notably, US audiences for the races in Australia and Belgium have tripled in this timeframe, while China, Monaco, Spain, Austria, Great Britain, Hungary, and Singapore have all experienced more than 100 per cent increases.

Consistency or stagnation?

The counter argument is that viewership figures in 2018 were too low to be representative and that Formula One’s US audience has grown from a relatively low bar. They help to emphasise the rapid rise of the series, but they also make it difficult to gauge how much room there is still to grow.

A health check of the last three seasons presents a slightly different picture, although the conclusion will vary depending on who you ask. Is Formula One showing signs of strong consistency, or has interest in the series plateaued and stagnated?

Formula One exceeded an average of one million viewers for a full season for the first time in 2022. However, the figure of 1.21 million viewers per race for that season has not been matched since. The series averaged 1.1 million viewers in 2023 and is currently averaging 1.16 million viewers before this weekend’s US Grand Prix.

One thing that Formula One has up its sleeve is three North American races in the final six Grands Prix of the season, with events in Austin, Mexico City, and Las Vegas still to come. This should hopefully tip the scales closer to the 2022 figure, but ESPN needs to average an audience of around 1.5 million in each of the final six races in order to set a record.

For context, the Mexico Grand Prix currently holds the highest record audience of those remaining races at 1.46 million, which was set last season.

A fairer metric would be comparing each of the last three season after 18 races, but the current 1.17 million average in 2024 matches the series average at the same point in 2023. It also falls short of the 1.22 million viewers in 2022.

The story of 2024 so far

Let’s look at this season in isolation, then. It’s safe to say that it’s been a year of two halves. Suchenski acknowledges the “difficult start” to the campaign before it turned on its head and ESPN averaged at least one million viewers for nine straight races.

The anomaly is, of course, the Miami Grand Prix, which smashed viewership records to become the most-watched race in US history with an average of 3.1 million viewers. This was also a 58 per cent YoY increase, the largest of the season so far.

Outside of this, the clear turning point came between the races in Imola and Monaco. The first six races of the season – not including Miami – struggled, with only the Bahrain Grand Prix averaging over one million viewers.

Suchenski points to the scheduling for these early challenges, with Australia, China, and Japan all taking place in the early hours of the morning in the US. Plus, the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were moved from Sunday to Saturday due to the timing of Ramadan.

“You’re asking viewers who we’ve trained for several years to show up on Sunday mornings … to come on Saturday mornings, which is just not traditional,” he explains. “Also, for us, Saturdays in March are fairly busy. We have a lot of events, college basketball and others, going on at that time. Schedule-wise [it] was not set up to be a great start.”

From Monaco onwards, which covers a span of 11 races, just the Azerbaijan Grand Prix averaged below one million viewers. During this time, there was also record viewership for the likes of Monaco, Canada, and Great Britain, the first two of which aired on commercial network ABC.

It’s also important to acknowledge the increase in on-track competitiveness that occurred, which may have encouraged more viewers to watch the series. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won seven of the first ten races, but failed to win any of the next eight. In that time, five different drivers have stood on the top step of the podium.

“I think nine of the first 18 races were up year-over-year, and several of them all set records,” Suchenski adds. “That combination of those large viewership gains for those ABC races coupled with the on-track competitiveness has yielded this great run that we’ve been on.”

Considering the competition

It’s not fair to look at Formula One’s performance in the US without considering the most obvious points of comparison: Nascar and IndyCar.

In isolation, Formula One’s growth is impressive, but it has only recently begun to generate the viewership numbers seen in IndyCar, which is arguably the most comparable series to Formula One.

While we wait for the official figure for the 2024 IndyCar season – which suggests an underwhelming year – 2022 (1.3 million) and 2023 (1.32 million) delivered strong viewership for the series compared to Formula One. That said, it’s worth pointing out that IndyCar is able to rely on the iconic Indianapolis 500 to boost its average audience figure, which regularly brings in around five million viewers for the series.

Nascar is a different story altogether. The stock car series has averaged over three million viewers for the last three regular seasons – although these figures drop when you include the postseason – which highlights that there is a contingent of US motorsport fans who have yet to be fully convinced to turn over to Formula One on a regular basis.

The key context is that neither of the two US-based series have grown their audience to the extent that Formula One has. In 2018, Nascar averaged 3.34 million viewers and IndyCar averaged 1.11 million viewers. Compared to their 2023 figures, that represents a 14 per cent decrease and a 19 per cent increase, respectively. In that same timeframe, Formula One has experienced a 106 per cent increase in viewership.

From next season, though, the US motorsport broadcasting landscape is evolving considerably, with both Nascar and IndyCar embarking on landmark new media rights deals. Coverage of the former is being split between four different broadcasters and the latter is receiving full coverage on Fox, making it the first motorsport series to ever get commercial coverage of every race in the US.

Suchenski, though, sees this is a positive for Formula One.

“We like that we are the one place to find [Formula One],” he explains. “The other series have a few things to work out with the changes they’re undergoing, whereas we have this level of consistency, and now it’s [about] how do we open it even further?”

So, has F1 broken the US market?

As with a lot of things, this comes down to perspective.

If your definition of breaking the US is averaging over one million viewers on a regular basis, then Formula One has already achieved this goal. If you think Formula One needs to regularly challenge Nascar’s audience numbers, then it has a long way to go.

The crucial point to consider here is that a global series is always going to struggle to compete with a domestic championship that caters to the local audience every weekend.

“No one’s going to argue that Nascar isn’t the biggest motorsport property in the US – it has been, those numbers are much bigger,” Suchenski highlights. “Those races happen in the afternoons and primetimes in the East Coast, whereas F1 has a niche of primarily mornings based on the European races.

“Where we’ve seen successes is in certain demo[graphics] – if you look at those side-by-side with Nascar and IndyCar, you’ll see that F1 holds it own, if not potentially overperforms for certain events over the course of the season.”

The focus for Formula One, therefore, is not on direct comparisons, but on how particularly younger and female audiences are engaging with the series more than their competitors. In many ways, this lays the foundation for the series to not only continue growing, but to establish a base of fervent supports for the future.

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