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Last week, I covered the NBA’s recent increase in viewership, along with a few other NBA-related topics. Today, I have even more sports updates on viewership, looking at…
- Formula 1’s (lack of) sports viewership data and what this says about whether ESPN or Formula 1: Drive to Survive really drove this sports “rise”.
- My take on Nielsen’s methodology changes.
- The NHL’s (relatively) big viewership pop and what actually caused it.
- World Cup viewership versus survey data.
Yeah, that’s a lot! I’ll try to keep it concise…
Let’s dive right in!
How Come Formula 1, Netflix and Apple TV Haven’t Released Any Data on Their Big Races?
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the then-upcoming Austrian Grand Prix was going to be streamed on Apple TV for free. Anyone could watch it! Then last week, via a glowing write-up about how successful Formula 1 is, I learned that Apple TV gave Netflix the rights to stream the Canadian Grand Prix on 24-May in exchange for episodes of Netflix’s Drive to Survive docu-series. The Canadian Grand Prix, historically, has been one of ESPN’s more popular races, given the beneficial start time.
So, did we get any information from Netflix or Apple or F1 about viewership in America for this year’s Canadian or Austrian Grand Prix races?
No, we did not. (I checked two search engines and two different LLMs.) The best I heard was that the Canadian Grand Prix got up to sixth place on the Netflix charts for one day. That’s not great.
Sigh.
Few sports have generated as many positive headlines as Formula 1 in the last eight years, but the silence here is brutal. I don’t want this lack of news to become a lack of awareness, so I plan on regularly highlighting this lack of data. I keep reading articles about F1’s awesome growth and strength in the US, yet this glaring omission of data tarnishes that story.
Let’s be clear, both of these stunts (putting the Canadian Grand Prix on Netflix and making the Austrian Grand Prix available for free) were designed to increase viewership and allow Formula 1’s PR team to put out a glowing datecdote about how well each race did. Clearly, since they didn’t put out any information, the viewership was very low, and likely lower than what the races got on ESPN last season. (Reminder, PR teams put out any bit of good information; if they say nothing, you should assume the worst.)
To reiterate the points I’ve made in the past, almost every media analyst credits Formula 1: Drive to Survive with Formula 1’s viewership “rise” in America—note: I put quotes around “rise” because Formula 1 is still an incredibly niche sport in the US with viewership that pales in comparison to major sports—instead of its move to ESPN a couple of years before. (In the past two months, I’ve read both an Axios report and an Athletic report making this exact case.)
Contra narratives many media pundits/analysts want to be true, ESPN (a stodgy old cable channel) as a platform mattered way, way more to Formula 1’s rise than Drive to Survive. This isn’t to say that Netflix’s sports docu-series didn’t matter at all or have some impact, but its impact was much smaller than most people think or the media coverage suggests. Honestly, if you look at the chart above, out-of-home viewing probably made the biggest impact on the numbers. Platforms matter, and these two races provide evidence (or lack of evidence in this case) in support of my thesis that ESPN powered Formula 1’s rise.
Let’s Talk Nielsen’s Big Data Panel
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