- Abu Dhabi brings 2025 season to an end with 1.5m viewers on ESPN
- 2025 campaign breaks official F1 viewership record on US TV of 1.21m viewers set in 2022
Formula One averaged a record 1.32 million viewers on US television during the 2025 season, its final year on ESPN before the championship moves to Apple.
All but three of this year’s 24 races had year-over-year (YoY) viewership growth and 16 in total set event viewership records, marking a successful finale to ESPN’s broadcast relationship with Formula One.
This breaks the official record of 1.21 million viewers set during the 2022 season. Interestingly, the average of the publicly released figures from that year seen by BlackBook Motorsport actually equals 1.19 million viewers, although that would still make 2022 a record season for viewership.
Abu Dhabi rounded out the season with an average viewership of 1.5 million on ESPN, a 53 per cent increase on last year’s race. The event also performed well with viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, with an average audience of 660,000 among that demographic.
Most notably, this year’s figure is a huge increase on the average viewership of 554,000 that tuned in to the very first year of ESPN’s broadcast partnership with Formula One in 2018, highlighting just how much the series has grown in the US.
As expected, races held in North and South America enjoyed the best average viewership in the US at 1.56 million viewers, but the Middle East also performed surprisingly well with an average audience of 1.41 million viewers in the US.
European races contributed an average audience of 1.33 million viewers, while the Asia-Pacific races understandably struggled with just over 848,000 viewers. It should be noted that these were all record figures for the respective regions.
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Formula One’s best viewership performance of the season came at the Monaco Grand Prix with an average of 2.3 million viewers, closely followed by the Miami Grand Prix at 2.2 million followers.
Most impressively, only four races dropped below an average of one million followers this year, underlining the greater audience consistency and retention across the Formula One season.
Now, the championship embarks on a new broadcast era with Apple, something that may have a short-term impact on the audience the series has established in the US, given viewers will need to migrate to an all-new destination after eight years watching on ESPN’s networks.
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