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Marcus Johnson (00:00):

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(00:42):

Welcome everyone to In the Game, an EMARKETER sports marketing podcast made possible by Rokt. This is a conversation about America's new and developing relationship with F1, Formula 1, and what Audi and Cadillac's entrance into the competition could do for their brands and for the sport at large and how advertisers can get involved. Hello, folks. I'm Marcus and today I'm alongside two senior analysts, both of them, one living in New York City. Blake Droesch, welcome to the show.

Blake Droesch (01:09):

Hey, Marcus. I didn't even know we had a new podcast, so I'm happy to be here.

Marcus Johnson (01:16):

Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

Blake Droesch (01:17):

This is a nice way to find out.

Marcus Johnson (01:19):

Blake thought it was just a meeting. Surprise, you're live. And also living up in Westchester is Ross Benes.

Ross Benes (01:26):

Hey, Marcus. I'm glad to appear on 100% of the episodes so far.

Marcus Johnson (01:31):

Ross here for his second installment and everyone's second installment of In the Game. Thank you guys for being here. Okay, so the new 2026 Formula 1 season is off to the races. Get it?

Ross Benes (01:44):

Yeah, I got it.

Marcus Johnson (01:47):

This final season, 2025 on ESPN delivered a viewership record writes Colin Salleo. He explains the ESPN announced that F1 averaged 1.3 million viewers across 24 races, so per race. ESPN says F1 has seen a 142% viewership increase since 2018. So the sport's getting more and more popular with every year. It's first year with the network was 2018, and it says it kind of points to the success of Netflix's docuseries, Formula 1: Drive to Survive. That was released in 2019, and that highlights the kind of personal drama, the rivalries, the behind the scenes narratives from the sport.

(02:31):

Following the show's release, from 2019 to 2022, the average number over those three years, the average number of Americans tuning in to F1 races doubled. So from 600,000 people a race in the States to 1.2 million. And so I want to start there with the kind of high growth period of Formula 1 in America. Before that, it's relatively flat. And we'll talk about the growth since then as well, because that hasn't been as impressive as that 2019 to 2022 block. Blake, I'll start with you. What do you think has been some of the biggest drivers, nothing? Okay. Of Formula 1's recent growth in the US?

Blake Droesch (03:09):

I'm just going to-

Marcus Johnson (03:10):

Tough crowd.

Blake Droesch (03:10):

Pretend that... Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (03:12):

Didn't happen?

Blake Droesch (03:13):

Let's move past that.

Marcus Johnson (03:14):

That's fair.

Blake Droesch (03:14):

I think it's probably 90 to 95% Drive to Survive. Because look, sports has appeal for two reasons. One, there's just the raw excitement of the competition. And then the second is the story. So the character arc of the people that you're watching compete. And we just got through the Winter Olympics and what fuels those broadcasts. It's the stories of the athletes. The American audience had no exposure to the drivers or the stories of the teams prior to the launch of the docuseries in the US. And that I think really gave it some life. And it really, I think, incentivized the audience that like the show, like the storyline, and also learned about how the sport operates to tune into the actual events themselves. I think it had a massive impact.

Marcus Johnson (04:22):

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of that story, as you're saying, that storytelling versus traditional sports coverage differentiator. And people connecting a lot more with the individuals, the personalities, the drivers, the mini celebrities that they are. That's a huge part of it. So okay, 95. And then the rest of it is just, what's the last little slither?

Blake Droesch (04:46):

Lewis Hamilton, probably. Yes. I mean, you have a guy who went on basically a sport defining run, much like probably American audiences saw with Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan over the last couple of decades. And when you have a figure who is that transformational in terms of just setting records and really raising the sport to new heights, I think that's bound to bring more appeal to it. I think the shame in a sense is that American audiences didn't really catch on to what Hamilton was doing until that documentary came out. I think that that was actually a huge miss for the F1 to not recognize this guy's appeal in the way that the PGA did with Tiger Woods to try and bring it to a larger audience. But we can get into that later. But I still think that just the run that Lewis Hamilton had in the late 20 teens definitely brought some more international hype to the sport for sure.

Marcus Johnson (06:04):

Yeah. Seven time champion for folks who are new to F1. That ties, he's tied for first for the most championships of all time. Schumacher being the other person who has seven. And I was speaking to Stewart, who runs a team about this. The best drivers are bigger brands than the teams in a lot of respects. Verstappen's kind of taken that mantle, now four time Dutch champion Max Verstappen. But Lewis Hamilton, I went and looked at his Instagram followers, he has 42 million. That's 10 million more than one of the most storied franchises in the sport, his own team, Ferrari. And by comparison, if you look at US sports, Luka Doncic, who's one of the five best most recognizable, and the faces of the league of the NBA, 10 million Instagram followers. The team he plays for, the Lakers, one of the most storied franchises in the sport, 25.

(06:54):

So double over double what he has. So these drivers really are... And there was a really great quote from Derek Chang. Liberty Media owns the F1. They bought them in 2017. It's an American media company. Chief Executive, Derek Chang said, "People may barely watch the race, but they do want to know what Lewis Hamilton had for dinner." Which I think is very true. Ross, where do you see most of this growth coming from from that period specifically?

Ross Benes (07:24):

Well, yeah, so a lot of it is the shoulder content. You mentioned the series, Blake mentioned the series, there's also the more recent movie. So there's been a lot of programming that isn't the actual live races, but that is F1 themed that has helped popularize it and bring more people in. And then with Lewis Hamilton, it's not just that he's so good at racing. He's such a celebrity and the number of celebrities that he's dated has also kept F1 in the general populous. I think a lot of people are probably aware of it more so now just because his romances, people who aren't necessarily sports fans get exposed to it that way.

Marcus Johnson (08:11):

Yeah. Dating Nicole Scherzinger, singer for the Pussycat Dolls. And a lot of other people, there's a lot of celebrity partners who are featured during the race. They're in the pits. And there's a lot of celebrities at the events as well, different folks who hang out with the teams in the pit lane and kind of cheer them on from their respective pit lanes or sometimes luxury suites. I think another, you mentioned the F1 movie Apple has as well. So Brad Pitt in that, that was also a big driver. So I think that was a good one, helping some of those casual fans get into the sport. I think the other part of this is the US races expansion. So they had Austin, but they added in recent years Miami and Las Vegas. And the US races get double the number of American viewers as the other international races. Miami actually gets 3.1 million. As I said before, the normal numbers are closer to 1.2, 1.1.

Ross Benes (09:14):

Well, it helps being awake.

Marcus Johnson (09:16):

Yes, exactly. The time zone.

Ross Benes (09:18):

If you're six times away, people are like, "Hey, I'm working or I'm sleeping." Depending on where they live.

Marcus Johnson (09:23):

I watched the Australian Grand Prix, the first one of the year. It just happened at 10:00 P.M. on Saturday because it was starting lunchtime in Australia on the Sunday. So it does definitely have to sync it up. Very, very international sport. So let's move to, that's 2019 to kind of 2022. If you look at the numbers from then, ESPN shows that their figures from 2022 to 2025, it went from 1.2 to 1.3 million. So it did go up, but not nearly by as much. And actually 2023 and 2024, the two in between years dipped a little bit. So it goes 2022, 1.2, 1.1, 1.1, 1.3. So it is a record, record year they had last year in terms of average viewership of a race in the US. But I asked Ross and Blake to take two different angles here, two different sides of the debate.

(10:23):

And we're going to start with Ross. He's going to be arguing that Formula 1 is breaking through in the US. Blake's going to argue that no, it's just in kind of a temporary hype cycle because of things like Drive to Survive. But Ross, why if you were the lawyer for the case of is breaking through in America, what do you think you'd be presenting to the court?

Ross Benes (10:44):

Well, so even though growth may have slowed down, it hasn't reversed itself. It's still at record levels in the US, which may be coming from a small base, but it isn't retreating. And in general, motorsports in the US have had trouble reaching a national audience. NASCAR is very Southern and very popular there, but not so much in Northern states. Monster Jam, motocross, things like that are a little niche from a TV advertiser perspective. But F1 I think is doing as well as reasonably can be expected for an international thing transported to the US.

Marcus Johnson (11:21):

Yeah, it's breaking a bunch of records. ESPN said 16 of the 24 races, so they raced 24 times throughout the year, 16 of them in 2025 set event viewership records in the US. With close to, if you totaled up all the people who watched a single race throughout the year, 30 million Americans watched at least one race. And those races as well, Ross, they're becoming even more engaging. I was speaking to Stewart who runs the team about this and he was making this point because he has an iPhone and he also has Apple TV+. And he was saying that it's a more engaging experience because Apple TV lets viewers switch between, I think it's close to 30 different live feeds. You get the main broadcast, the direct driver onboard cameras, the pit lane, et cetera, et cetera. And it gives marketers more opportunity to capture the attention of folks. It also offers notifications when the race starts, key moments, overtakes, safety cars, things like that. So it does seem like it's becoming a more engaging viewership experience.

Ross Benes (12:22):

Apple TV doesn't do a lot of live sports, but when they do, their broadcasting quality is excellent. I watched some Friday night baseball last year, and it's better than ESPN. The level of crispness on the image that's so HI-DEF, but also the displays that they have and the statistics they bring. I haven't actually watched F1 on there, but to seeing how they've done baseball and also soccer, I think they're ahead of most of the TV networks, even though they aren't reaching most US homes.

Marcus Johnson (12:57):

Yeah. Yeah. I had some trouble signing up to Apple TV+, but-

Ross Benes (13:03):

It's not an easy user experience.

Marcus Johnson (13:06):

No, I didn't find that either. But once I did sign up, the coverage was great.

Ross Benes (13:12):

Especially if you have an Android.

Marcus Johnson (13:14):

Yes. Yes, exactly right. Exactly right. And then I think another big part of this as well, we're talking about Apple TV and what they're able to do, they're able to inject into the sport. They've got a partnership this year. And so Apple TV+, it's not one of the most popular streaming services, but Netflix is, and they're collaborating with Netflix on coverage this year. So Netflix's Drive to Survive season eight will be on both platforms, Netflix and Apple TV+. And Apple TV+, which has the rights to the F1, will give Netflix the Canadian Grand Prix in May, and that will be available on both platforms. So I think that could also give it a bit of a lift. But why do you say, I mean, I've asked you to pick a case, so maybe not you personally, but as the lawyer for the hype cycle case, why do you think that this actually is going to fizzle out eventually?

Blake Droesch (14:04):

Yeah, I think it's really because I don't think growth will... I don't think that the viewership will drop drastically. I think that the fans that they've accumulated through Drive to Survive will be sticky to a degree in the US. I think that they're going to have a hard time continuing to grow the audience without that vehicle. I don't necessarily think that the Apple partnership is necessarily going to be this Trojan horse that maybe F1 hopes it will be to getting onto American screens. I think to Ross's point, Apple TV has great broadcast quality, but it doesn't have the subscription size, the subscription base that would be really necessary, I think, to really have it be the sole promoter of the events. I also think it's something that Ross alluded to before is that the timing of these events is just not really conducive to growing an American audience.

(15:17):

A lot of these races take place early Sunday morning or sort of mid-morning Sundays, and I think that's just not really a great time for an American audience, particularly when most of the year or at least 20 to 25 weeks out of the year, Sundays are really dedicated to American football. I think it's going to be really hard to compete with that. I also think that F1 is this interesting sport where it has this sort of adoption curve where it's very exciting to watch a few clips of a race, particularly the end of the race. And I think that Drive to Survive had done a great job of really focusing in on that excitement, but to really enjoy the entirety of an F1 race, you have to be pretty up on all of the technical dynamics of the racing and the cars themselves. And that's a curve that I think it's going to be pretty difficult for sort of a fair weather fan to really get brought up to the speed to the point where they're watching it consistently.

Marcus Johnson (16:27):

Yeah. I think you touched on two very good points there, which is one, in particular, one, the competition from the other sports, popular US sports is just so overwhelming. And the season goes from March through to December.

Blake Droesch (16:40):

It's a long season, yeah.

Marcus Johnson (16:42):

Yeah. And you're hitting a lot, basically all of the major US sports. You've got NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS now, and NASCAR as well. NASCAR's huge. It's about 2.5 million per race, so double what the F1 is getting. And so that's a formidable competitor in terms of mode sports competition. But then the second thing you mentioned there is young people especially don't have the attention to sit and watch a two-hour race. And there are no commercials, breaks in between, obviously, because it's a race, even though there are ads everywhere. And there's a fair amount of technical terms as well. So maybe, I mean, fans can engage with it in different ways, and that's what they're trying to push, kind of social media, short clips, behind the scenes footage. But TV audiences, I was reading, Liberty Media said, TV audiences for the races are down. From 2019 to 2024. Liberty Media said cumulative views, this is around the world, went from 1.9 billion to 1.6.

(17:44):

So I think that they are struggling to get people to sit and watch the entire race. Also, you need a good US driver to root for. I mean, that's part of the problem. If there were no British drivers, I think I'd struggled to get into the sport. You have the US teams, you have Haas, and you now have Cadillac who just got into the sport. So General Motors joined the F1 this season under the Cadillac brands. They're coming in as the 11th racing team, but you don't have a good... You had Logan Sargeant, he raced from 2023 to 2024, I think it was, with Williams, but he finished 10th. His best finish was 10th, which gets you one point. So I think he had one point for the season. Mario Andretti, people might be more familiar with that name. He won the Formula 1. He's an American won in 1978. So I think part of this also is, does America have a driver to get behind, to root for?

Blake Droesch (18:35):

Yeah. I think that's like a lot of the F1 drivers are kind of just like European nepo babies, and it's hard to get behind them, I think, unless there's a certain audience for that. But then when you sort of dig into the sport and realize that half of these guys that are great F1 drivers come from a long lineage of people who have been in the sport, brought up around the sport.

Marcus Johnson (19:02):

Or have tons of money.

Blake Droesch (19:03):

Or have tons of money and just buy these teams and then they have their son become the driver. This is not a sport where you can have that sort of all American, came from nothing, worked his way up. Just that type of ladder that you could see in the NBA, for example, does not really exist in F1 because of just how high the barrier to entry is in the sport.

Marcus Johnson (19:27):

It's a great point. Outside of Lewis Hamilton, I think he's the only one who from karting as a kid, which is why they should have jumped on that bandwagon a long, long time ago because he was a true kind of ranks to riches story.

Blake Droesch (19:38):

Yeah, for sure.

Marcus Johnson (19:39):

Yeah. Everyone else, not so much for the most part. I want to move on to the next question, but two other things in support of ... And when I was going through this, I was trying to find reasons for both sides of this argument, but I did end up finding more for the breaking through argument, two more I've got here. One is that the rights are getting more expensive. And so that typically indicates that the demand for them. Apple paying 140, one, four, zero million dollars a year for the new rights contract. F1's last year with ESPN was about 75 to 90-ish a year. And this is a longer contract as well. This is a five, the last one was a three. So I think that's part of it.

(20:15):

And then just the F1 doing well around the world. American company, so Liberty Media buying them in 2017, an Economist article noting that since then, F1's revenues have more than doubled to nearly $4 billion in 2025, operating profits before depreciation and amortization to nearly 1 billion, and F1 stock market value has also surged to over 20 billion, all three main revenue sources, fees paid by race promoters, sales of media rights and sponsorship and advertising have grown impressively, the article was noting. But we're talking about America. We're talking about viewership in this country and ad dollars and sponsorship going to Formula 1 in this country. Ross, what does F1 need to do to make US fandom sustainable? Put another way, you're pretend CMO of F1. What's the first thing you change to try to keep eyeballs on this sport?

Ross Benes (21:18):

Well, I would recognize first that the American audience isn't what's most important. You've got to maintain your base everywhere else. But if I'm tasked specifically with growing US audience, I would focus in on what you and Blake were talking about, that there is no major US driver, really US driver at all. When I think about how the NBA has been popularized in other countries, like Yao Ming really helped popularize it in China, Dirk and before him, Toni Kukoc and a bunch of other guys helped popularize the NBA throughout Europe. It helps that there's guys like Luka right now and Giannis.

Marcus Johnson (21:57):

[inaudible 00:21:58].

Ross Benes (21:58):

Exactly. So if you could insert some US drivers in here, even if they are nepo babies in a way, maybe you can find an heir to some sort of fortune who wants to build a team and get into F1. It generates some interest.

Marcus Johnson (22:17):

Yeah, yeah. Blake, how about... Well, actually really quickly on that, I think that's, we're talking about growing the US audience and it's become more popular in the US, but this is a great opportunity for advertisers to reach the international community through this sport because it is a really global audience. I mentioned 24 races. They span across 21 different countries and the viewers in many, many, many more than those 21 countries, I think the global audience is around 1.6 billion people. And so definitely don't ignore that international audience that you could be reaching with this sport. And also really, we mentioned the race calendar goes from March all the way to December, and so you're getting coverage all throughout the year, getting exposure all throughout the year, but these are also three-day weekends. So going from practice events on Friday to qualifying on Saturday to the race on Sunday. So a lot of opportunity, whereas a lot of other games, it's just the one event and then you have to wait. There's really something going on almost every day throughout the F1 calendar. Blake, what would you do?

Blake Droesch (23:21):

I think, and I'm sorry, I'm not going to fully answer your question here, but I would be skeptical around really trying to scale the US audience and instead focus on the value of the existing US audience and really just sort of cater to that niche as much as possible for a couple of reasons. One thing that Ross said that I think really stands out is F1 is a European sport. And I think that if the F1 really tries hard to Americanize it, it will be off-putting. And there has been sort of some pushback against the push to expand the number of races that they have in the US and catering to an American audience with the sort of core audience. You definitely don't want to isolate.

(24:13):

The growth that they've had in the US, and this, I don't have any stats to back this up, but I would imagine is just based on the sponsorships that they're getting, an affluent audience that likes to spend a lot of money, that likes watches, they like luxury, they like cars, and that is something that is not necessarily going to, if as you grow the sport, it could potentially water down the higher value of that audience.

(24:48):

And I also think that the American audience that sort of has come around to it is more akin to its existing European audience than it would be if you try to expand the tent in the US. I think it's going to become necessary that the ethos of the sport changes in order to bring in a wider US audience. I would be skeptical of that. And I think just to look at the PGA, for example, Marcus, as you know, I'm a big golf fan, they've been trying for years to grow the sport, to grow the sport. It's very similar to the way that F1 is looking at it.

(25:32):

And because it's a similar format, you've got frequent tournaments, but only a few that really get a high amount of interest from the general public. And that's why with the LIV League, they've tried to make it way more applicable to a general audience, make it fun, make it exciting. That's not what the golf fan wants, and that's why the LIV League is struggling. So with F1, you kind of potentially have a similar predicament where if you try to make a big tent, you're going to lose that core audience, and that core audience is already really valuable.

Marcus Johnson (26:06):

Yeah. Yeah, it's a really good take. And it kind of ties back into where the sport is at the moment from an advertising perspective. I went back and looked at how F1 got into sponsorships, the history of it. The first race, 1950 in Silverstone in the UK, teams raced, they had national racing colors back then, so there were no kind of sponsors. Then in the late '60s, tobacco companies, Goldleaf, Marlboro, Camel started to sponsor teams in part because the cigarette industry was facing pressure from advertising restrictions on TV. So they were like, "We'll advertise on cars." But the European Union Tobacco Advertising Directive effectively removed tobacco sponsorship from Formula 1 by 2006. So then here come the energy companies, Shell, financial services, Santander, tech companies, Vodafone, this is a phone carrier in the UK. Then F1 repositioned itself as a premium global marketing platform in the 2010s, enter Rolex, Emirates, et cetera, and sponsorships pivoted to these experiential events, these hospitality suites, VIP race experiences.

(27:15):

So that's kind of where they are now. It's an affluent audience, premium branding opportunity, sponsorship opportunities. So I like that. Maybe you don't have to grow it to 10 million people a race, maybe you just continue to grow slowly and focused on the audience that you have. All right, gents. Well, that's where we'll leave the conversation for today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today for the second installment of In the Game. Thank you first to Ross.

Ross Benes (27:41):

Thanks, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (27:41):

Yes, indeed. And of course to Blake.

Blake Droesch (27:44):

You're welcome. Now that none of this podcast exists, maybe I'll come back again sometime.

Marcus Johnson (27:48):

I'll see you every month until eternity. Thank you so much to the production crew, Lance, helping us out with this one and Stuart, who runs the team as well. Many thanks to them. And of course, thanks to everyone for listening into In The Game an EMARKETER sports marketing podcast made possible by Rokt. Hope to see you in next month's episode of the show.