Netflix’s Drive to Survive brought widespread American attention to the elite sport. Now the US is hosting more races than any other nation.
(Bloomberg) — With three US races scheduled for 2023—the most of any country—this may be the year Formula 1 discovers whether a hit Netflix series translates into a hardcore American fan base.
Following last month’s Miami Grand Prix, which saw 270,000 people descend on the city’s International Autodrome, the F1 tour’s next US stop is in Austin, Texas, this October.
But the big show will be the following month, when F1 arrives for the first time in Las Vegas. In the latest episode of the Bloomberg Originals series Next in Sports (which you can view here), we go behind the scenes to see how an incredibly expensive, elite global sport has come to embrace the land of NASCAR—and how the land of NASCAR is embracing it right back.
Stefano Domenicali, F1’s chief executive, remembers how only a few years ago he and his team still felt trepidation about their American venture. But F1’s momentous shift in approach—with social media, its inaugural Miami Grand Prix in 2022 and most of all Netflix’s Drive to Survive—erased those doubts. “We were engaged with the American fans and we saw that Miami was phenomenal,” Domenicali said. “And we said, ‘Okay, now it’s time to think bigger.’ And that’s why we took the decision to come to Vegas.”
View More: See all Episodes of the Bloomberg Originals Series Next in Sports
F1’s American push began when billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Media purchased it from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners in 2016. The new owners targeted key markets, including the US, and attempted to grow the popularity of the sport through digital streaming. They struck gold with Drive to Survive. The show premiered in March 2019, and has grown from an average audience of 288,000 in its first season to almost 475,000 in its fourth, according to Nielsen.
As the series has grown in popularity, so to has the real thing. The 2022 F1 World Championship season ended as the most-viewed ever on American television, hitting 1.21 million viewers per race across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. Its previous record, 949,000 views per race, was set in 2021.
The Las Vegas event, which is costing Liberty $500 million to put on, will see the company acting as both manager of the sport and owner of the race, something never seen before in F1.
“Through the explosion of popularity from Netflix as well as Americans beginning to embrace the sport’s more-younger demographic, more-female demographic, the timing was absolutely right,” said Renee Wilm, chief executive of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. F1 currently has just one American driver, Logan Sargeant, and one team, Haas F1. But Ford and General Motors have plans to join the hunt in the coming years.
As for Sargeant, he said he’ll be happy to compete on his own asphalt. “I think it’s gonna be a special feeling to race at home,” he said. “Hopefully I’m able to give the crowd someone to cheer for.”
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