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Formula 1 has, for as long as anyone can remember, flirted with breaking into the US market. Twelve different circuits have hosted a championship grand prix in the US since 1950.
However, despite sustained efforts, F1 has yet to make the car racing competition a success in the market it covets most. In fact, the US remains the country where one of its most farcical races took place, at the 2005 US Grand Prix at Indianapolis because of a tyre scandal. That threatened to do irreversible damage to the sport’s hopes of growing in the US.
But slowly, with uncharacteristic patience, F1 has continued its courtship with the US and is starting to see the rewards of that effort, in part because of its American owners. Liberty Media bought F1 in January 2017 and made it their goal to crack the US market.
They have started by adding more races there. On a packed calendar of 24 races, three are held in the US: Miami, Austin and Las Vegas. They allowed unprecedented access to Netflix, which resulted in the successful fly-on-the-wall documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive. And then there was the success of Apple’s award-winning Brad Pitt-led F1 film. But no one knows more than F1 itself that the interest in the sport remains comparatively low in the US compared with other sports.
Last season, ESPN held the rights to broadcast F1 in the US and averaged about 1.3mn viewers for the races. To put that into context, the Super Bowl typically draws well over 100mn viewers in the US. So it is little wonder that Apple took a look under the bonnet and decided to turbocharge the relationship between F1 and the US.
Last year, Apple won the rights to broadcast F1 for the next five years in a deal reported to be worth about $750mn in total. ESPN previously paid about $80mn-$90mn a year. Apple’s push is being fronted by Eddy Cue, its senior vice-president of…