Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix drew the largest audience for a live Formula 1 race broadcast in the USA.
Formula 1’s regular broadcaster in the US is ESPN but parent network ABC took on the Miami Grand Prix broadcast, boosting viewership. An average live audience of 2.6 million people watched the coverage.
Qualifying and practice were broadcast on ESPN. Qualifying drawing 953,000 viewers and the first practice session on the new Miami International Autodrome attracted 398,000. These were the largest qualifying and practice audiences since F1 returned to being broadcast on ESPN in 2018.
F1’s figures compared favourably with those for NASCAR, America’s most popular form of motorsport, which held its Darlington 400 on the same day, drawing an audience of 2.614 million.
An average 735,000 people between the ages of 18-49 watched the Miami Grand Prix. This is a key demographic reflecting the younger audience growth F1 claims it has seen from the popularity of Netflix’s Drive To Survive series. They represent between 28% of F1’s viewers, which compares favourably to NASCAR’s 19%.
Last year’s US Grand Prix drew an average audience of 1.2 million, the most viewed in the US in 2021, showing significant growth in audience to Miami.
The average US audience for F1 races in 2020 was 609,000 viewers, growing by over a third to average 949,000 viewers per race in 2021. For the 2022 season F1 reported an average of 1.4 million US viewers per race, exceeding last year’s most-watched event by 200,000.
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