With greater than 400 million viewers, Formula 1 is one of the popular sports on the earth. Yet for a few years it was all but unknown in America.
But reality TV modified all that.
Because the Netflix series “Drive to Survive” — featuring behind-the-scenes footage of the usually-secretive racing teams and the sometimes contentious relationships between drivers and team executives — debuted in 2019, the American audience for Formula 1 has skyrocketed.
Netflix doesn’t publicize viewer data, however the audience for ESPN’s coverage of Formula 1 races has nearly doubled — as much as 1.5 million views per race — for the reason that show premiered.
In keeping with a recent Nielsen study, Formula 1 is heading in the right direction to top a billion worldwide fans this 12 months, with 77 percent of those latest fans under 35 years old.
“Without ‘Drive to Survive’ there could be no American F1 boom,” Kevin Clark, host of The Ringer’s F1 Show, told The Post. When his podcast began, the thought was to recap episodes of the binge-worthy show and preview each of the 22 races in the game’s season. The success of the podcast caught him and the staff of The Ringer, a preferred sports and popular culture site, by surprise, nonetheless.
Drivers like Lewis Hamilton (from left), Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly (with Honda F1 General Manager Masahi Yamamoto) have turn into stars in America.Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
“Once we saw the numbers, we saw the response,” Clark said. “We knew this wasn’t going to be an element time thing. We tapped into something.” In keeping with the podcast rankings at Chartable, The Ringer F1 Show is often among the many top 50 sports podcasts in the US.
Formula 1 has gotten so big that Sun., May 8, marks the inaugural Miami Grand Prix, which can be run within the Hard Rock Stadium — complete with a makeshift Monaco-style marina for yachts built only for the occasion — and has ticket prices rivaling the Super Bowl.
“You take a look at Formula 1 and it’s healthier than it’s ever been before. We’re selling sold-out tickets, to this point, all over the place, and I believe it’s going to proceed the entire of this 12 months,” driver Alex Albon — a “Drive to Survive” star — told Page Six in the course of the Williams Racing launch party on the W Hotel South Beach on Thursday.
In one other sign that “Drive to Survive” is fueling the brand new American Formula 1 fandom, the Miami Grand Prix driver’s parade — a pre-race tradition of the game where drivers travel the circuit out of their cars so fans can see them up close and private — will, for the primary time, include Team Principals, the executives who’ve turn into celebrities on the show.
Miami is definitely the second American race: The US Grand Prix, run in Austin, Texas, since 2012, saw a 15 percent increase in attendance in the primary 12 months of “Drive to Survive,” with 250,000 fans attending the race — a number on par with a typical Kentucky Derby crowd. In 2021, that number had grown to over 400,000, making it the biggest crowd at a Formula 1 race anywhere on the earth, ever.
Drivers like Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris have lots to have fun, with F1 finally welcoming young fans.Formula 1 via Getty Images
Next 12 months there are plans so as to add a 3rd American stop and race cars down the Las Vegas Strip.
“I began watching ‘Drive to Survive’ three months ago and I went from actively disliking motorsports to being obsessive about F1. I examine it day-after-day, I’m on the Reddit day-after-day, I text about it day-after-day, I give it some thought day-after-day,” television author Travis Helwig, 34, told The Post. “Like most sports, the perfect part is the narrative, and Formula 1 lends itself to the drama and narrative well. There’s only 20 participants, so it’s easy to learn every participant’s story.”
American-based Liberty Media Group purchased Formula 1 for $4.4 billion in 2016 and partnered with Netflix in a radical departure from anything the brand had done before.
“Drive to Survive” is exclusive, in response to Clark, even amongst sports reality shows. While HBO’s NFL reality series “Hard Knocks” gives the NFL final say over what’s broadcast, Netflix has no such agreement with Formula 1,
Latest fan Travis Helwig said he’s turn into hooked on the purpose that he reads in regards to the sport day-after-day, while Alexis Novak compares the “Drive to Survive” drama to “Real Housewives.”
The result, Clark added, is a way more revealing and entertaining show, and one that pulls in fans who not only never watched Formula 1 before, but never even watched sports in any respect.
“Reality shows — even if you happen to think they take away from the competitive element, even if you happen to think that it makes a mockery of the game — it’s the simplest approach to create superstars,” Clark said. “Tens of tens of millions of individuals have watched ‘Drive to Survive.’ And there are such a lot of individuals who didn’t like sports who are actually watching this each weekend.
“The switch between how F1 markets itself is an entertainment product was an enormous inflection point in the game.”
“I didn’t care about F1 in any respect. After watching ‘Drive to Survive,’ I’ll now teach my [future] children about F1,” said Alexis Novak, 31, the founding father of the web clothing store Tab Vintage. “It made me feel giddy and made me wish to follow and support my favorite drivers like I used to with boy bands.”
Netflix has announced no less than two more seasons of “Drive to Survive”Netflix
For Novak, who says she has at all times “actively disliked sports,” “Drive to Survive” made Formula 1 seem different. “It’s not like other sports since you get to know the people within the cars, the people working on the cars, and the owners. You get to see the politics behind the races too,” she said. “It’s an ideal crossover of culture, wealth, fame, adrenaline and drama —just like the ‘Real Housewives’ meets the Super Bowl.”
Former Formula 1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone was famously dismissive of younger fans.
“I don’t know why people wish to get to the so-called ‘young generation,’” Ecclestone told Campaign Asia-Pacific magazine in 2014. “Why do they need to try this? Is it to sell them something? Most of those kids haven’t got any money. I’d quite get to the 70-year-old guy who’s got loads of money.”
The impact of the growing American audience is being felt around the globe, too.
“Forty percent of our audience is from the US now, and only 25 percent is from the UK,” said BBC radio presenter Richard Ready, host of the Formula 1 podcast “Missed Apex.” “So if people wish to get snobby about ‘Drive to Survive’ fans, they need to form of realize they’re a bit outnumbered now.”
Lewis Hamilton is a serious star of the game.Getty Images
Ready is referring to a growing concern, particularly amongst some European fans of the game, that these latest fans are going to “Americanize” it: putting an emphasis on personalities, exaggerating rivalries and minor disputes and fulfilling the American need for all sporting contests to be dramatic and decisive.
“Americans cannot abide a tie,” Ready says. “Formula 1, to me, is usually special because nothing happens. And that may be a British thing or a European thing. In soccer, we don’t mind the odd boring draw … In the event you force the spectacular on a regular basis, it’s like having birthday cake day-after-day. So when your birthday comes around, is it that special?”
The fear that playing to the American audience’s appetite for drama got here to a boil in last 12 months’s final race in Abu Dhabi, where the 2 top drivers were tied in points for the championship. After it looked just like the race could be decisively won by reigning champion Lewis Hamilton, a controversial decision by the Race Director Michael Masi allowed challenger Max Verstappen to shut the gap and win in the ultimate lap of the race.
The result was an exhilarating neck-and-neck finish, but longtime fans of Formula 1 cried foul, saying Masi broke the principles. An investigation by the FIA, Formula 1’s governing body, found that Masi’s decision was the results of “human error” and he was replaced as Race Director. Many fans wondered if that error was the invisible hand of Netflix guiding the race results.
A controversial decision by the Race Director Michael Masi allowed challenger Max Verstappen above) to shut the gap and win in the ultimate lap of a race. Getty Images
“There was already a suspicion going into that, that there’s been a Netflix-ization of the game,” said Clark. “I believe what you saw in Abu Dhabi was just general run of the mill incompetence, but because there was already a skepticism amongst diehard fans, you saw more theories about that.”
“I don’t see that as a conspiracy theory,” Ready arued. “I see it as very plausible.”
Netflix just confirmed confirmed two more seasons of “Drive to Survive,” and producers have been spotted at Formula 1 races this season.
“Formula 1 now, I actually have to say, is an American sport,” Ready admitted. “And as much because the things which are coming in from the US may be jarring to us, F1 did need them.”
