The rising popularity of Formula 1 looked almost unstoppable last year and has affected every area of the sport.
The series signed multi-year TV agreements and announced a record-breaking 2023 F1 calendar. Lucrative expanded partnerships were announced with the likes of Amazon Web Services. It finally landed a new manufacturer as Audi announced it will step in when the next generation of power units arrive. Around the world, grand prix events were sold out.
F1’s owner Liberty Media continues to see its revenues increase across race promotion, media rights and sponsorship. Following rises in Q1 and Q2, Formula 1 reported its revenue for the third quarter of 2022 rose by 7% compared to the same period last year.
The championship was not always this healthy. Compare the current situation to a decade ago, when F1 was still run by Bernie Ecclestone, and the worldwide viewership fell significantly year-on-year. In 2013 the numbers published by Formula 1’s then-commercial rights owners CVC in its official Global Report were bleak. From 515 million viewers worldwide in 2012 the figure had slumped to 450 million.
Ecclestone said the dominance of Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel had turned audiences away, resulting in fewer people tuning in for the final few races of the season. That was certainly the case: Vettel won all of the final nine races that year as he romped to the title. But Max Verstappen’s similar dominance this year hasn’t stopped F1 booming.
It’s almost six years since Ecclestone was ousted and Liberty Media took control of the sport. Since then new audiences have been attracted through Netflix’s Drive to Survive, and younger audiences flocked to races, helped by the growing rivalry between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a factor throughout much of this, but F1 was one of the first sports to get up and running again after the first half of its 2020 season was cancelled.
While the pandemic inevitably depressed earnings, Liberty Media can be satisfied with the recovery since then. The series generated $715 million (£638m) of revenue across July, August and September. After the first seven races the total average audience per grand prix was 22.9m, a rise of 11%.
The new Miami Grand Prix – a marquee race Liberty toiled for years to get on the calendar – recorded a total audience across the weekend of 23m, up 27% against the 2021 United States GP. The Dutch Grand Prix race had a record…
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