On completing its acquisition of Formula One in 2017, Liberty Media quickly identified the United States, a country where the sport had historically struggled, as its most important growth market.
Eight years later, the sport’s standing in the U.S. is unrecognizable. F1 has three races on American soil, in Austin, Miami and Las Vegas. It has fresh American manufacturer interest, courtesy of Ford and Cadillac, and has enjoyed a surge in popularity.
Much of F1’s growth has been put down to the success of Drive to Survive, the Netflix docuseries that debuted in 2019 and remains a staple part of its annual programming.
But with Netflix considering a bid for F1’s broadcast rights in the United States, which are up for renewal at the end of the year, the fight for the next TV deal could have a big impact on the sport — and likely go far beyond the estimated existing rights fee of $90 million per year.
“The price is so low, it can only go up really substantially,” François Godard, a senior media analyst for Enders, a media research and analysis company, told The Athletic.
When F1 moved to its current American broadcast home, ESPN, in 2018, the sport’s popularity in the United States was markedly different.
The United States Grand Prix in Austin was the only American race on the calendar and had faced moments of great uncertainty over its future due to a dip in attendance and funding struggles. Thoughts of three races on U.S. soil seemed fanciful when keeping one alive was hard enough.
F1’s previous U.S. broadcaster, NBC, had carried the rights since 2013. However, renewal talks broke down because of F1’s plans to launch its own streaming service, F1 TV. ESPN swooped in, picking up the rights for free on an initial three-year deal. The agreement ensured F1 remained with a major American broadcaster, carrying the commentary and broadcast from Sky Sports, a subscription service in the UK, while making F1 TV available to viewers in the U.S. on its launch.
ESPN drew an average audience of 554,000 fans in its first year of broadcasting before reporting figures of 672,000 and 608,000 through 2019 and 2020. But after Drive to Survive became a lockdown hit and the intense 2021 championship fight between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen went to the final lap of the season, TV figures surged — reaching a record high of 1.2 million on average in 2022.
The past two seasons have each averaged 1.1 million viewers per race, significantly higher than pre-pandemic figures but less than, for example, the UK, a nation with a significantly smaller population. The most recent publicly available figure issued by Sky Sports for its UK TV broadcasts was in 2022, when it averaged 1.7 million viewers per race. It is thought to pay over $250 million per year for the UK rights, with its deal running through to 2029.
ESPN’s latest F1 renewal was signed in October 2022 and increased the rights fee to an estimated $90 million per year. But it predated the expansion of the sport’s footprint in the United States. The Miami Grand Prix only staged its first race in May 2022 and Las Vegas did not join the calendar until November 2023.
The three-year deals gave F1 the flexibility to watch how the sport fared in the U.S. With a secure American foothold, a more diverse audience than ever before and an influx of American interest through sponsors and big tech companies, now may be the time to cash in through an increase in the U.S. TV rights package.
A bigger fee would be welcome news not only for F1 but also for the 10 teams racing on the track. Along with race promotion fees from host countries and sponsorship, media rights are one of the primary sources of revenue for F1, which totaled $2.56 billion through 2023. Out of that, $1.215 billion was paid back to teams through prize money. If the overall revenue rises, so does their income. It makes the topic one that all will follow closely.
Netflix’s expansion into broadcasting live sports has steadily gathered pace in recent years, serving as a shift in its position.
In 2022, Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos seemed cool on the possibility of Netflix following rival services, such as Amazon and Apple, down the live sports avenue. He said at a conference in 2022 that Netflix had “not seen a profit path to renting big sports,” and that it was “not anti-sports, we’re just pro-profit.”
Since then, Netflix has moved into live sports. It signed a 10-year deal to exclusively show WWE Raw, which started last month, and showed the heavyweight fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul last year, which Netflix said pulled in an international audience of more than 108 million viewers. It also has exclusive rights for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031. In November, Netflix hired Kate Jackson, ESPN’s vice president of production, as its new director of sports in a further sign of how significant live sporting events could be to its future.
Perhaps its most notable deal was to show the two NFL games on Christmas Day last year, starting a three-year, $150 million per season agreement. A halftime show featuring Beyoncé in the second game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Houston Texans only added to the spectacle, helping the two games become the most-watched NFL match-ups on a streaming service in the United States, with an average of 24 million viewers. The Ravens-Texans game peaked at 27 million during Beyoncé’s half-time show.
Carlos Sainz and Justin Thomas won The Netflix Cup, a live Netflix Sports event during the 2023 Las Vegas GP. (David Becker / Getty Images for Netflix © 2023)
“I think (Netflix) liked very much what they did,” said Godard. “They say they want eventful sporting competitions and they did a great job at making this an event at Christmas with Beyoncé. And I think what they may like with Formula One is that it is an eventful thing.”
F1 has increasingly leaned on being more than just a racing series in recent years. On-site at grands prix, it has encouraged promoters to put on concerts with big-name acts as part of the fan offering, while it has also toyed with ways of enhancing the spectacle for the broadcast with mixed results, such as through the driver introductions in Miami in 2023 or the ‘opening ceremony’ in Las Vegas later that year. Buying into F1’s glitz and glamor, particularly with the number of celebrities and big names attending races, would tick the ‘event’ box for Netflix. It also has direct knowledge of what F1’s audience looks like thanks to Drive to Survive.
But Pierre Maes, a media rights consultant and author, noted that Netflix and other streaming services have tended to purchase rights for more one-off sporting events rather than season-long competitions that larger, more traditional broadcasters offer. It would make a bid for the F1 rights a major change of course compared to its recent sports interest.
“Of course, on paper, Netflix is interested,” Maes told The Athletic. “They have been doing Drive to Survive and everybody thinks, OK, it’s a natural follow-up to this move as Drive to Survive has been so successful.
“But I don’t think they want to participate in an auction where they would compete against ESPN and maybe Apple or Amazon and drive the prices up. They don’t want to do that, that’s clear.”
Maes also pondered whether F1’s audience in the United States was big enough to satisfy Netflix. “They’re doing around one million viewers per grand prix,” Maes said. “That is definitely not a big sport. They have been buying this NFL Christmas game and that’s maybe more what they like.”
“That said, I think that if there is an opportunity for them to maybe buy these rights at what they consider to be a very good price, I think they might go for it, that’s for sure,” Maes added. “But, today, I would say no.”
David Murray, a media rights expert, thought F1 could offer Netflix a relatively cheap way of testing the water in covering an entire season. “They haven’t really done any long-term sport over the course of a season,” he told The Athletic. “So it’s a good experiment for them to see how it does.”
But for Netflix to seriously go after a season-long sporting property like F1 would require a big pivot from its existing stance. As recently as two weeks ago, Sarandos said in a call with investors that it was still preferring the one-off events due to the financial pressures that come with taking on a longer-term product.
“We are constantly trying to broaden our programming and live events is one of those things and sports is part of those live events,” Sarandos said.
“But it doesn’t really change the underlying economics of full-season, big-league sports being extremely challenging. So if there was a path where we can actually make the economics work for both us and the league, we certainly would explore.
“But right now, we believe that the live events business is where we really want to be and sports is a very important part of that, but it is a part of that expansion.”
F1 hosts two more American races per year than it did when it signed its deal with ESPN (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
It is not a question of whether or not the rights fee goes up, it is by how much and, perhaps crucially, which parties are at the table, Netflix or not.
Ian Holmes, F1’s director of media rights, was in the United States last week for exploratory talks with potential broadcast partners, coinciding with the Super Bowl. Although ESPN’s exclusivity period has expired, it will naturally be interested in building on the growth it has enjoyed with F1 since first picking up the rights.
Amazon was previously interested in a deal before ESPN’s last renewal, while there is also a natural link between the sport and Apple, which is producing the F1 movie starring Brad Pitt that will be released in June. Fox expanded its motorsports offering in 2025 with the acquisition of IndyCar rights, while NBC put more weight on its Peacock streaming service by placing NFL games on there.
Godard thought F1’s status as a “cool and young” sport made it a “very exciting product” for potential broadcasters, as well as being appealing commercially through any advertising. He described the current estimated figure of $90 million as “peanuts” for a 24-race global sport that also has plenty of events in the summer months when other traditional sports, such as soccer, the NFL and the NBA, are in between seasons. He drew the comparison to the reported $1.8 billion per year that Amazon will pay to broadcast the NBA from the 2025-26 season.
While he felt it was “very difficult to forecast” how high the fee would go, he said it could go “much higher” than the last deal. “Hundreds of millions, yes,” Godard said. “I would see this more than doubling because of this potential we have.”
Maes was less certain about the outlook. “It’s difficult to see at this stage what part is the rightsholder’s bulls— and what part is the truth,” he said. “We will only know in one year or a year-and-a-half’s time. So it’s very difficult to say. I would bet on rightsholder’s bulls—, to be fair.”
One trade-off that many broadcasters face when entering such agreements is between the money it brings in and the potential shift in the audience. While Netflix was pleased with the figures for its NFL games, they were still down five million on the previous year’s Christmas Day games, which drew over 29 million viewers when broadcast on CBS and Fox.
F1 has built a strong U.S. audience while partnered with ESPN. (Ken Murray / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Given how hard F1 has worked to build its audience in the United States, it will not want to risk undoing that work if going with a streaming service could prove detrimental. ESPN said last year’s Miami Grand Prix set a record for a live U.S. TV audience, averaging 3.1 million viewers. But it may have benefitted from being shown on ABC right after Game 7 between the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA, which had an average of 4.32 million viewers, according to Sports Media Watch. That kind of potential lead-in boost is not possible with streaming partners.
But Maes did not think the potential hit on the audience was such a consideration for sports leagues. “If the rights holder gets good money, (I’m) not so sure that it’s really interested in the viewing (figures), you know?” he said.
All of these factors will be considered by F1 when it comes to negotiating with interested broadcasters and competition looks inevitable given the sport’s recent growth in the United States. The viewing figures may be comparatively small compared to the more established American sports leagues, but it also means the sums are likely to be relative.
If F1 is keen to cash in on the swell in American interest, now may be the time to do it. A serious pursuit by Netflix of the rights would take not only a big change of heart in its view on full-season sporting products, but it is likely to require a shift away from its aversion to entering bidding wars given the likely rivals it will face.
Regardless of which broadcasters end up at the table, the impact of the streamers is likely to be felt. F1’s fan demographic ticks a lot of boxes and the sport has the appeal of making subscribers “stickier,” according to Murray, as a full-season property means they won’t simply subscribe for a single event.
If the U.S. deal were to end up with one of the streaming companies, he also thought it could open the door for consideration to global rights in the future, straying away from F1’s traditional territory-by-territory deals.
“You can see these big streaming companies clearly have spending power that your traditional broadcaster doesn’t have,” Murray said.
“For me, the interesting question is how long before we start getting genuinely global deals from these digital companies?”
Whether it’s Netflix, ESPN, or another broadcaster, this round of negotiations has far more weighing on it than the previous deals — and, given the significance of the U.S. market, will be critical to the sport’s fortunes, both financial and otherwise, going forward.
(Top photo: Clive Rose/Getty Images)
