Open-wheel motor racing’s elite Formula 1 (F1) series has maintained its strong viewership in the US, averaging 1.11 million viewers per race on the Disney-owned ESPN group of linear and OTT sports networks across the recently-completed 2024 season.
The 24-race campaign, which saw Red Bull driver Max Verstappen retain the drivers championship while the McLaren team won its first Constructors Championship since 1998, peaked in terms of US viewing numbers with the Miami Grand Prix which drew a US record 3.1 million viewers.
That was not enough, however, to see the series match the record average season viewership of 1.2 million set in 2022, although it came close.
The 1.1 million figure however was roughly in line with the circa 1.1 million average viewership the series drew in 2023, indicating that the series has reached a consistent level of support among US TV viewers on ESPN, one of the country’s most prominent pay-TV sports broadcasters and F1's rightsholder in the market.
Although the Miami GP was a record high for the sport in the country, other races such as the Las Vegas Grand Prix, failed to match up to viewership in recent years.
The upcoming 2025 campaign, which will once again feature three US races alongside others in neighboring Mexico and Canada, will be the final year of Disney’s current three-year F1 rights package.
The broadcaster is, reportedly, already in talks with F1 about a renewal beyond 2025, ostensibly thanks to the consistently strong viewership as of late (the last four F1 campaigns have been the four most watched in the US).
Logan Sargent, the Series’ sole US driver in 2023 and 2024, is not set to return in 2025, but the 2022 season’s broadcast shows that an American interest on the track is not necessary for attracting viewers in the country, where in other sports such as soccer it may well be more important.
ESPN first acquired the rights to F1 in 2018, but the series’ US viewership was supercharged in 2019 following the release of the immensely popular annual Netflix documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive, which chronicles each season and has drawn a massive swathe of new fans, and sponsors, to the sport.
