In 2017, US mass media ownership group Liberty Media decided to enter the world of motorsports ownership, setting out to acquire racing’s elite series, Formula 1 (F1).
Although F1 has always been the highest class of open-wheel racing, the series’ brand had struggled in the years leading up to the purchase, with commercial values suffering as spiraling costs and stagnant revenues led to multiple teams going bust.
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In 2010, Toyota dropped out for financial reasons, and BMW, also struggling financially, sold its team to Sauber. As a response, the series brought in three new teams, Virgin, Lotus, and HRT. Of those three, none were still in F1 by the time Liberty completed the takeover, with all of them going bankrupt.
Liberty’s tenure did not get off to a great start, in 2018 the firm was criticized after F1 made a £13 million ($18.4 million at the time) annual loss, on revenue of $1.83 billion, the largest the sport had made in a decade, not least because F1’s prize money, a considerable driver of team revenue at the time, also dropped by 5.9% as a result.
That trend would not continue.
In the 2024 calendar year, F1 generated $3.65 billion in revenue, a record for the sport, and the series’ financial strength has grown annually since the COVID-19-affected downturn of 2020, making it one of the most lucrative sporting tours in the world.
Now the question isn’t “can Liberty stop the skid?” Its “can Liberty expand further?” With the looming addition of motorcycle racing’s MotoGP to Liberty’s portfolio, the financial dominance of the world’s biggest motorsport is making itself known, but how has F1 become a commercial monolith so soon after its public struggles?
Big in America
Much of the change in F1’s fortunes has been driven by the series’ open embrace of the US market, which has, in turn, yielded major dividends for the series.
The US is the world’s largest and most lucrative sports market, owing to the plethora of pay-TV sports options, the nation’s monetary wealth, massive sports fandom, and the surplus of powerful businesses seeking to invest in sports sponsorships.
Despite this, for several years, F1 was in a position of weakness in the US market despite the strength of domestic motorsports leagues such as Nascar and IndyCar, with traditional F1 territories such as the UK, Brazil, and Italy prioritized.
Greg Maffei said in 2017 that F1’s deal in the US was negligible, an understatement for what was a $3 million rights fee, but saw potential in the market for major revenue gains.
Maffei, who became Liberty chief executive (CEO) in 2013, used the slang phrase “popcorn fart” to deride the contract with US national broadcaster NBC, a deal at the time reported to be worth around $3 million per year.
By comparison, ESPN, F1’s current US broadcaster, now pays $85 million per year for those media rights, and despite the Disney-owned broadcaster being set to drop F1, the series is set to demand as much as $180 million per year in upcoming US rights negotiations.
ESPN’s initial three-year F1 deal between 2018 and 2020 saw the media giant pick up the rights for free, and by the end of the 2020 season, the series had averaged over 600,000 viewers two years in a row in the US, positive numbers, if not outstanding.
After the launch of the Drive to Survive Netflix documentary series, which became a smash hit during the COVID-19 pandemic as people turned to streamers such as Netflix for entertainment, interest in the US skyrocketed.
In 2022, the series notched a record average of 1.2 million viewers per race across the season, and each of the two subsequent campaigns has also averaged seven-figure viewership.
The US-based races, of which there are now three, are similarly massive commercial and viewership drivers, with the 2024 Miami Grand Prix drawing a record 3.1 million watchers.
All this has created an environment for the sport to thrive in the US, creating a crossover effect where more Americans than ever are watching non-US races despite the global timing travails.
Already in the 2025 campaign, which is three races in, the upward trend of F1 viewership is continuing, with the season opening Australian Grand prix notching over 1.1 million average viewers, and the following Chinese Grand Prix attracting close to 900,000, a 32% increase year-on-year, both coming despite adverse Asian/Australian time zones.
That the US has been a major driver of F1’s recent success is a sentiment echoed by Jefferson Slack, managing director for commercial at the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team (AMF1), who attributes the key to F1's recent success to the series’ expanded presence in the territory.
Speaking to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), Slack points to the Miami Grand Prix, first run in 2022, as the turning point. Where there had only been one trip to the US per year, from then on, there were two, and now three, with the addition of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
What this meant, he adds, is that F1 now has more of a presence than ever in US time zones, and where races would previously occur at night or early in the morning now take place at prime viewership slots, on more prominent broadcast outlets.
He commented that it also makes sense for F1 to expand in the US to satiate its commercial partners, saying: “For most companies in the world, if they're global, if you don't have a US presence your marketing value to them certainly diminishes significantly, whereas if you do have a US/Pacific, presence, then all of a sudden you are truly global.”
Findings from the GlobalData Sport Business of Formula 1 2025 report corroborate this idea. Over half of all current F1 team title sponsors, the most lucrative sponsorship category, are headquartered in the US, and over 1/3rd of the commercial deals agreed by teams competing in 2025 come from US-based companies.
US firms are collectively committed to investing over $1.6 billion in F1 throughout the various contracts, the overwhelming plurality of the sum of F1 investment.
For F1 itself, close to 30% of the series-wide sponsorship deals also hail from the US, investing a total of $126.25 million directly into the series every year. With nine of the 31 total deals, that figure marks triple the next most common market for sponsorships (three from the UK and Germany each).
The tech boom
Alongside the surge in popularity F1 has experienced in the US, a prominent component of the series’ recent commercial boom is the continued investment in firms from the tech sector into the F1 teams and the series itself.
The GlobalData Sport Business of Formula 1 2025 report found that the technology, media & telecommunications sector, a wide-ranging and financially powerful business sector, was by far the biggest benefactor in terms of piling sponsorship revenue into the series.
GlobalData Sport estimates that businesses in the sector will spend $497.15 million on sponsorship of Formula 1 teams through the 2025 campaign, which represents 26.1% of total sponsorship spend across those teams.
The staggering investment represents not just the value of sponsorship inventory in F1 but also F1’s use as a promotional vehicle for these businesses.
Unlike other individual sports such as tennis, boxing, or mixed martial arts, the performance of individuals in motorsports is beholden to the technological capabilities of the vehicles they pilot.
This gives an extra dimension to tech-focused partnerships, wherein firms can not just gain sponsorship inventory but also demonstrate the power of their solutions live on TV for 20+ races per season as their tech is integrated into the team performance.
A prime example of this is Atlassian, an Australian business-to-business software firm focused on “system-of-work” project management solutions, which became the new title sponsor of the Williams Racing team ahead of the 2025 campaign.
Immediately, the brand gained prominent sponsorship inventory across the team, on the livery of the Williams car, on the apparel and race suits worn by its two drivers and team staff, and across its physical and digital environment, including on its social media and digital channels.
As important for Atlassian, however, the firm has installed its solutions across Williams, giving it a chance to demonstrate the efficacy of its proprietary software at an elite sporting franchise.
Atlassian chief revenue officer Brian Duffy explained when speaking to Sportcal at the time that the firm is embedding a team within Williams Racing to best exemplify the gains to be made through the software solution.
“We also have an opportunity to now showcase the investments that we're making into Williams and the transformation journey that they are going to go on. We're committed to making Williams a showcase example of a system of work.”
The ability of an F1 sponsorship to grow global brand awareness, demonstrate technology, and improve existing client relations in one fell swoop is a key reason why the tech sector has mobilized so heavily to sponsor the series, even its less recently successful teams such as Williams, and as such why the series is in its current place of power.
Star power
The “Drive to Survive” effect is often vaguely quoted as having been the revolutionary driver behind F1’s current prosperity, but in reality, that effect has been two-fold. Firstly, it has brought many more fans into the sport through an accessible, well-presented serial, and secondly, in doing so, it has made the 20 drivers on the grid (as well as the other personalities around F1) crossover celebrities outwith motorsport.
As of February 28, the F1 grid’s 20 talents collectively boast over 180 million followers across social media platforms Instagram, X, and Facebook.
The most high-profile drivers each boast social media followers greater than even the majority of F1’s teams.
The knock-on effects this has for sponsor visibility are well-noted. Atlassian joined Williams this year as the team’s first title sponsor in four years after the driver Carlos Sainz, the fourth most popular driver on the grid by social media follows, joined the team.
Alongside his social media following, Sainz also brought with him to Williams his suite of sponsors, including Spanish band Santander, a major coup for the team to gain what had previously been a Ferrari sponsor.
F1 driver lineups have long been about balancing aptitude with financial backing, and on an even playing field, drivers that bring significant sponsorship backing with them will often take precedence over similarly skilled drivers with lesser funding.
This new era of drivers as celebrities has pushed this into overdrive, with the significant social media followings the racers are now able to command amplifying sponsor visibility and bringing waves of new investment into the sport for any team smart enough to capitalize.
Aston Martin is one team that has taken a balanced tact in this regard. On one hand there is Fernando Alonso, an icon of the sport and two-time World Drivers Championship winner. On the other is Lance Stroll, the son of Aston Martin executive chair Lawrence Stroll and the sole North American driver on the grid, a factor that in itself opens up significant sponsorship avenues.
On the benefits of a marketable driver pairing, Slack added: “[It’s] enormously important. I think social media has given us a channel to communicate in ways that [teams] traditionally have not. We're in an environment where sport has gotten much younger, and the fans are the type of people that want to engage on social media.”
Teams will always cater to the old fashioned “petrol heads”, those who are fans of motorsport, and produce more technologically-focused content around the cars to suit them, but the new generation of motorsport fan that is attracted to the personalities within the series, and in particular the drivers, is a massive consumer segment that brands are continually taking greater notice of for commercial investment purposes.
For more insight on the commercial side of Formula 1, read the GlobalData Sport Business of Formula 1 2025 report for analysis on the series’ sponsorship and media landscape, social media, Grand Prix, and more.
