Should brands swerve, or steer as F1’s U.S. viewership adapts to new coverage?

But sports marketing experts say that F1’s growth among American audiences still has plenty of road left before it peaks — and that brands shouldn’t mistake a streaming numbers blip for a slowdown in fandom momentum.

“Whenever you have a major change of rightsholder like this, you always need to take a rounded view,” said James Allen, president of F1 at agency Right Formula.

The season hasn’t wanted for spills and thrills, with an open championship currently led by Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli, who won the Italian Grand Prix last week at Monza. But viewership estimates published recently by Samba (which is not an official ratings provider for either F1 or Apple TV) suggest that household reach for the Miami Grand Prix fell 68% versus 2025, while the Monaco Grand Prix fell 66%.

Nielsen estimated that at least 2 million viewers tuned into those races last year, when F1 was shown on ESPN and ABC. Under the sport’s five year deal with Apple, most races are available in the U.S. via the iPhone maker’s streaming service.

There are other yellow lights. Recent seasons of Netflix’s Drive To Survive series, credited with energizing interest in F1 in the United States, have seen viewership tail off. Total views fell over 10% for its 2025 season, for example. 

Formula 1 executives aggressively dispute Samba’s estimates, pointing out they have no relationship with the service. They argue that Apple TV performance so far has actually attracted a more appealing audience. “In the U.S., Formula 1’s momentum on Apple continues to build, with viewership up year-over-year, season-to-date, and total hours watched up 13%. We could not be more pleased with this result,” said Derek Chang, president and CEO of Liberty Media, F1’s owner, during the company’s Q2 earnings announcement. “This season, F1 has attracted a much younger and more female audience in the U.S. on Apple TV. Our experience with Apple continues to reinforce the opportunity to pair premium live coverage with product innovation and broader ecosystem breadth without compromising reach.”

The sport’s organizers are doubling down on maximizing exposure. Formula 1 launched a global mid-season brand campaign intended to re-engage both casual fans and hardcore followers as the racing season resumed following its usual summer break. Disruption to the racing schedule — the Grands Prix in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were cancelled as a result of the war between the U.S. and Iran — has made that effort more important this year.

“It’s such an unusual position… for us to cancel races. What that meant from a marketing standpoint is we had to think about how to keep fans interested,” said Donna Birkett Baida, director of marketing, at Formula 1.

The campaign centers on a film created by creative agency WING and features the dulcet tones of actor Colin Farrell, highlighting the sport’s driver protagonists. 

Birkett Baida said F1 had pulled media dollars forward from its 2027 budget in order to boost re-engagement efforts. “Because of the disruption in the calendar we had to spend more… to ensure that people stayed interested in our brand,” she said, without providing financial specifics.

More recent data suggests an improving picture, as Liberty Media’s Chang noted. Samba estimates shared with Digiday suggested household reach for the Italian Grand Prix in Monza increased 15% compared with last year’s race, while average time spent viewing the event increased 78%.

With Grands Prix in Las Vegas and Austin still to come this year, marketers keeping a close eye on F1’s momentum will be weighing up the balance of those viewership figures to understand whether its growth in the U.S. has begun to slow or whether it’s merely going over a speedbump.

Valerie Middleton, evp, head of sport at M+C Saatchi Sport + Entertainment argued the latter was the case.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily evidence that there’s a dip in support,” said Middleton. “To me, it looks less like a collapse of F1 fandom, and more like a temporary disconnect between really that demand and distribution.”

Rather than reacting to viewership figures in the short-term, Middleton advised scanning for other signals like race attendance figures or social engagement.

Attendance at this year’s Miami Grand Prix broke event records, with 275,000 fans gathering for the race in May. Engagement is another. According to F1 president and CEO Stefano Domenicali, total hours watched rose 13%, indicating those watching were significantly more engaged. “The fandom is still growing; this is a blip, as you would expect moving from a mass portal to a gated entry,” she said.

Renewal rates for Apple TV subscriptions after the season’s end could provide another signal, noted David Gaspar, partner and head of innovation at sports marketing consultancy Gather.

“There’s a lot of noise in the system right now. I want to see what renewal behavior looks like in 2027, both for Apple and for F1 content,” he said.

The chance that F1’s momentum slows isn’t zero — nor is the risk that brands attempting to capitalize as it peaks, end up paying over the odds. Ampere Analysis estimates sponsorship revenue will surpass $3 billion this year, on the back of AI companies like Meta and Anthropic signing partnerships. Gaspar warned that the market was “frothy”. 

“Sponsors voting with their checkbooks here is important,” he said. “It’s a frothy sponsorship market. They’re getting huge dollars and huge valuations for these things.”

But such partnerships still deliver real value. Marketing effectiveness firm MarketCast estimates suggest Formula 1 sponsorships provide a 34 point lift in purchase consideration. “I don’t think the momentum of the sport is slowing down at all,” said Kerel Cooper, CMO at MarketCast.

Both Formula 1’s own execs and sports marketing practitioners argue that brands shouldn’t fret if only a core of F1’s audience has so far followed it to Apple. “We now have this web of touchpoints, we didn’t 10 years ago,” said Birkett Baida. More fans follow via highlights reels or drivers’ social platforms than watch each minute of every race, she noted.

With the sport’s viewing figures in flux, Middleton suggested that brands target audiences via side-channels like experiential, paid social or creator marketing.

“There’s a huge opportunity to capture the fans who are temporarily outside the paywall,” she said. “You don’t need rights — you can meet the fans where they are.”