How F1 Exploded

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00:00Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the colossal scale of Formula One than the newest addition

00:05to its five-continent calendar, the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

00:10Starting in 2023, F1 was going to race down one of the most iconic roads in America—the

00:14Las Vegas Strip—but in order to facilitate that, they needed a paddock—the facility

00:20serving as temporary home to the ten teams, during race weekend.

00:23And specifically, they'd need a paddock close enough to the Strip—the street with

00:27some of the highest commercial land values in the entire world.

00:31But it was no issue for Formula One management, who paid $240 million for this square plot,

00:38just 1,300 feet or 400 meters long on each side.

00:41But that was just the start—then they needed to actually build the paddock.

00:46The fast-tracked construction of the facility reportedly cost upwards of $100 million.

00:52Then they had to build the racetrack.

00:54This was to be a street race, taking place on otherwise public roads, but the conventional

00:58pavement did not even come close to meeting the standards necessary for the world's

01:02fastest racing series.

01:03Therefore, F1 spent six months and many, many millions more resurfacing the roads, much

01:09to the annoyance of Las Vegas locals who had to endure endless delays on the already congested

01:14streets.

01:15And construction ramped up even more around two months out, as assembly of the grandstands,

01:19pedestrian bridges, and other temporary facilities began, requiring the relocation of trees,

01:24the draining of the Bellagio's iconic fountains, and plenty of other drastic changes to the strip.

01:29All in, Formula One is reported to have spent upwards of half a billion dollars developing

01:34its Vegas street circuit.

01:35So that's to say, they spent more than a small nation's GDP to build the facilities

01:41for one annual, 90-minute race.

01:45To put that in perspective, just a few blocks to the south is the fourth most expensive

01:50stadium ever built in the entire world.

01:53It's called Allegiant Stadium, and it costs about $2 billion.

01:57Its primary purpose is to host the Las Vegas Raiders—the 11th most valuable sports team

02:02in the world.

02:03The Raiders, of course, play in the NFL—the highest revenue sports league in the world.

02:08Allegiant Stadium also hosts college football and wrestling and concerts and more, but if

02:12you ignore all that, and just focus on the Raiders, dividing $2 billion in construction

02:17costs by eight annual regular season home games brings you to a construction cost of

02:22$250 million per annual event.

02:26So that means, at minimum, F1 spent double as much in facility construction costs for

02:32its annual Las Vegas event.

02:34But of course, they don't just race in Vegas—a similar degree of disruption and devotion

02:39happens each year in Singapore, where the iconic streets of Marina Bay are shut down

02:43for its now-legendary Grand Prix.

02:45And most iconically, the entire country of Monaco transforms into a racetrack each spring,

02:51leading up to its late-May Grand Prix.

02:53And on top of that, the series stops at a half-dozen other street circuits, along with

02:57more than a dozen dedicated circuits dotted around the world each year—each pulling

03:01in three, four, sometimes close to 500,000 fans across race weekend.

03:07Few motorsports events pull in crowds even close to those of F1's, meaning these circuits

03:11have large portions of their infrastructure—parking lots, grandstands, buildings—that only

03:16ever get used once a year for that 90-minute F1 race.

03:20Despite this terrible inefficiency, plenty of these races actually turn a profit for

03:25the circuits and promoters—not all, but enough that F1 now has far more venues vying

03:30to host a race than they can reasonably accommodate in an annual calendar.

03:33They've eliminated some less lucrative races and expanded the number of races each year,

03:38but still then F1 is starting to schedule certain races only every two years to cope

03:42with demand and develop new markets.

03:45But just one decade ago, such thunderous growth would have seemed unimaginable.

03:51Throughout the 2010s, F1 was in a state of decline—its viewership figures were shrinking

03:57year after year, and by 2015, this summed to a third of its audience gone in just seven

04:03years.

04:05Most races were failing to get funding, existing races were cancelling out of unprofitability,

04:10from audience figures to revenue, F1 was just failing on all fronts.

04:14And while marketing was poor and digital strategy was bad and leadership was weak, the largest

04:20explanation for the state of F1 in the mid-2010s was remarkably simple—Formula 1 was, unequivocally

04:26and objectively, just plain boring.

04:30You see, much of their viewer experience is wrapped up in the contribution of each race

04:34towards the season-long battle for drivers to score the most points and maintain the

04:39lead of the Drivers' Championship—the grand prize.

04:42In the 2015 season, reigning champion Lewis Hamilton won the very first race, in Australia,

04:47meaning he started the season in first place of the Drivers' Championship.

04:51At the second race, in Malaysia, contender Sebastian Vettel won, but Hamilton's second

04:55place earned him enough points to stay in the lead of the Drivers' Championship.

05:00Two weeks later in China, he won again, keeping him in the lead.

05:05In fact, throughout the 19 races of the 2015 season, Hamilton never left first place in

05:09the Drivers' Championship.

05:11From the audience's perspective, there was no struggle, no uncertainty—it was just

05:16pure dominance.

05:18Hamilton and his Mercedes teammate, Nico Rosberg, led a collective 82% of all laps, while the

05:24top three drivers combined led 97%.

05:28By the end of the season, Mercedes had won all but three of the 19 races.

05:33Racing was rarely tight—the Mercedes cars often finished dozens of seconds ahead of

05:37first place.

05:38For a casual TV audience, it was just plain boring.

05:43And 2015 was hardly unique in its boringness.

05:47Over the past 20 seasons, the Drivers' Championship has only been fought all the way till the

05:51final race, eight times.

05:53In all other seasons, a driver has mathematically clinched it earlier, sometimes by as much

05:58as six races, and a mathematical clinch always happens long after the audience considers

06:03the championship a foregone conclusion.

06:05So that's to say, F1 has a particular propensity for this style of boring dominance.

06:11As an entertainment business, it's potentially its fatal flaw, but the explanation for why

06:16Formula One can be boring is right in the name—it's the fault of the formula.

06:22The word formula, in this context, is a reference to the set of rules and regulations that govern

06:27what teams are allowed to change in a car's design, and what they aren't.

06:32Essentially, any motor racing series has some equivalent set of rules and regulations,

06:36but F1's is uniquely open-ended.

06:38It's supposed to be a battle of driver skill and engineering prowess.

06:43This is in comparison to something like NASCAR, where all teams are given the exact same car,

06:47are allowed to do little beyond setup changes, and the sport is intended to be fundamentally

06:51a battle of driver skill.

06:53Even in IndyCar, F1's closest equivalent, teams are given limited freedom to modify

06:58the vehicles.

06:59While there certainly are other motorsport series that allow for open-ended development,

07:03with the exception of MotoGP, they don't tend to have large audiences because it often

07:08comes at the expense of entertainment.

07:10They often end up with scenarios where one car is just so dominant that driver skill

07:15can't make up for the difference.

07:16What's most exciting for a TV audience is to watch close racing won or lost by the drivers—this

07:23secretive development happening behind the scenes clearly does not translate into very

07:27exciting television.

07:29The sport attempts to mitigate the downsides of this system by dramatically revamping the

07:32rules every five or so years, which tends to shake up the hierarchy of performance as

07:36teams must find new, technical solutions to achieve superlative performance.

07:40It was such a revamp that ended Mercedes' era of dominance in 2021, in fact.

07:46But sometimes these shakeups only perpetuate dominance as wealthier teams are able to devote

07:50more of their budget to developing the new era of cars years in advance, whereas smaller

07:55teams must concentrate their spending on improving the car for the current season.

07:59So, the solution to fixing F1's decline in the 2010s was never going to be to change

08:04what makes Formula One, Formula One.

08:07But it's not like they had a whole lot of other good ideas, either.

08:11For all that former CEO Bernie Eccleston did for F1 over more than 50 years in the sport,

08:16after founding the Formula One group in 1987 and captaining it as CEO for 30 years, there

08:21is one interview that's come to define F1's position in the 2010s—one critical

08:27miss that's come to encapsulate the dying days of his leadership of the sport.

08:32Speaking with the campaign Asia Pacific Magazine, Eccleston articulated that he saw no value

08:36in reaching out to a younger generation of fans or building out the brand's social

08:40media presence.

08:41Why invest in pushing content over Facebook and Twitter, his logic went, when young people

08:46won't have the money required to interact with the sport's sponsors like Rolex or

08:49UBS?

08:51Sure, total viewership worldwide was plummeting year over year, but there was no point in

08:55trying to address that with viewers and fans with shallow pockets.

08:58So, a sport historically defined by a lack of parody whose most interesting aspects were

09:03shrouded in esoteric design details seemed destined to remain on the fringes.

09:08Then, in late 2016, the sport entered a quiet revolution as Liberty Media, well-versed in

09:14sports television and sports media generally, agreed to purchase the floundering Formula

09:19One group for $4.4 billion.

09:22The vision was simple—Liberty Media had little intention of overhauling rules so core

09:27to the sport and so difficult to alter, but rather overhaul how the sport was consumed.

09:33As this pitch deck relayed, the opportunities were in promotion of F1 as a sport and brand,

09:38in digital distribution, and in more strategically developed events—essentially, in widening

09:44the sport out from its narrow, core audience.

09:47But at the simplest level, the problem standing in the way of growing the audience as they

09:51saw it was that the race at the front of the pack was not always very interesting.

09:56Therefore, the solution was also simple—make people care less about who was going to win

10:03the race.

10:04The transformation began at the Circuit of Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, where pre-season

10:08testing was taking place in late February 2017.

10:11First, a letter circulated to the teams stating that existing social media restrictions on

10:16filming and sharing photos and videos from the paddock were being lifted.

10:20Then, this post—a video tweeted out by Red Bull following the daily routine of its star

10:25driver Daniel Ricciardo—what he eats for breakfast and with whom, how he stretches

10:29and prepares for the testing, and him getting in the race car itself.

10:32A day later came another behind-the-scenes video, but this time from the Mercedes team—showing,

10:38through time-lapses, how the team gets a car ready through the night for the eventual champion

10:41Lewis Hamilton the following day.

10:44With the restrictions lifted, it was a race between teams to start building out their

10:47own content, and notably, in both Red Bull and Mercedes' efforts, neither the car nor

10:53the testing was the focus—rather, it was the people who drove them and built them that

10:58took center stage.

10:59Fans, it turned out, wanted to know more about who was under the helmet, and F1 obliged.

11:06Soon came this video on the Mercedes YouTube page—one of its earliest videos to break

11:10a million views—and, while premised around doing what was never allowed before by touring

11:15the hospitality setup in Melbourne, the top comments have far less to say about the paddock,

11:19and more on the character, charisma, and confidence of Lewis Hamilton.

11:24Viewers said they hadn't seen this side of him, and now they wanted more.

11:28Similarly empowered, Daniel Ricciardo, Hamilton's rival on the racetrack, saw his profile begin

11:32to grow as the sport, his Red Bull team, and he himself pushed his brand and offered an

11:37entrance into the daily life of F1.

11:40From 2015 to 2017, the driver's Instagram profile took off, garnering hundreds of thousands

11:45of likes rather than the customary tens of thousands pulled in years prior.

11:49And while both drivers happened to be towards the front of the pack, race in, race out,

11:53it wasn't only their success that garnered the increased attention.

11:57While Ricciardo's race results dipped from a high watermark in 2016 to losing a seat

12:01entirely in 2024, one can argue that he's never been as famous as he is now as an ever-available,

12:07equally fun-loving, and emotionally open athlete that the most casual F1 fan recognizes,

12:12and to an extent feels as though they understand.

12:15While that required only a simple change in policy, F1 quickly identified the opportunity

12:19of growing the off-track profiles of its drivers, and started to play a more active role in

12:24it.

12:25This is a sampling of the official F1 Twitter page from January 19th, 2015.

12:30There are only three posts on that day, and all are using the app to push users to read

12:35old-school journalism content on F1's website.

12:38Two years later, January 19th looked like this—more posts—seven in total, a link

12:42to an article, some news reported right there on Twitter, a birthday wish to a driver, an

12:47old image, and a trend post.

12:49Now F1 wasn't just using Twitter to push to its website's content—it was using

12:53Twitter as a home for content itself.

12:56And most notably, not all the content was about on-track action—a lot was just about

13:01the drivers as people.

13:03By January 19th of 2025, this transformation was complete—over 20 posts, all of it content

13:09for the fan to consume without leaving the app.

13:12A similar investment is visible with F1's YouTube page, as videos published in the year

13:16prior to this all-important interview outlining a bold new future for the sport number just

13:21over 250, while those posted after this video until the beginning of the 2018 season cleanly

13:27double that count, numbering in the low 500s.

13:31The effect of these shifts, F1 hoped, was that people would care more about, say, watching

13:35Daniel Ricciardo make his way from 10th to 8th place, and therefore be able to focus

13:40less on Hamilton maintaining a 10-second lead in first place.

13:44But that required them to get them to watch in the first place, and then keep them watching.

13:48If the sport was now to emphasize the driver as much as the car, and the characters as

13:53much as their positions across the field, it needed to match the social media push to

13:58helmets.

13:59So, more cameras—not just on the race course, but within the paddock as well—and more

14:03live microphones too.

14:05By 2018, the broadcast began to include the communications between drivers and their teams,

14:10and then communications between team principals and the FIA, and the race directors.

14:14Now what the viewer could not see in a standard race—the strategic communication, the high-stakes,

14:19high-stress decision-making, and the occasional argument over rules—they could experience

14:23through the audio.

14:24This, along with increased focus on investing more on-air time to the midfield rather than

14:29just the leaders, made a race more engaging for the less engineering-inclined viewer.

14:34Other moves made the races easier for casual viewers, from revamping the broadcast theme

14:38music for the US audience, to adding an ever-present leaderboard so anyone flipping channels could

14:42understand the race's status immediately.

14:45These strategies seemingly worked.

14:48In 2018, for the first time in a decade, F1's unique viewership rose.

14:53And most promisingly, they made the biggest headway in the one market that's always

14:58been F1's white whale—the one viewer base that, up until that point, remained uncharmed

15:05by Formula One—America.

15:07So they doubled down on the strategy, and turned the F1 grid into a format Americans

15:11were more used to—a reality TV show.

15:15It was called Drive to Survive.

15:18Debuting in 2018, this Netflix show gave audiences unprecedented levels of access into, particularly,

15:24the drama and personalities of the sport.

15:28Viewers were immediately captivated by Daniel Ricciardo and team principal Gunter Steiner,

15:32and with an American audience that hit 1.2 million and a global audience that reached

15:367 million, almost a third of which were under 30, plenty were tuning into the series having

15:41never watched an actual race.

15:43F1 was going mainstream.

15:46The timing was impeccable, particularly for the US audience.

15:49F1's evolving digital strategy was already giving it momentum, but Drive to Survive launched

15:54just one year after F1 secured distribution rights in the states with ESPN.

15:59At the time, the sports network signed on for a steal, being granted the rights to air

16:03F1 races for free.

16:05By 2020, the company was paying a meager $5 million per year.

16:09But in the following two years, the US audience outright doubled, and so ESPN's license

16:14fee soon exploded too to upwards of $75 million annually.

16:19The Drive to Survive effect equaled big business for Formula 1.

16:22Besides the licensing from ESPN, it increased viewers, followers, advertisers, and attendance.

16:28Now, the once Euro-luxury car race that merely raised eyebrows in the states became one of

16:32the nation's most talked about events, with Formula 1 breaking records in Austin, Texas

16:37by not only doubling its attendance from 263,000 in 2018 to 444,000 in 2022, but by becoming

16:45the most highly-attended iteration of the race in its history, and one of the most-attended

16:50Grand Prix in the sport's history outright.

16:53Liberty Media didn't stop there, however—they tripled out on America and expanded host cities

16:58to include two of the United States' most iconic and campy locations—Miami and Las

17:03Vegas.

17:04Here, money is flamboyant, and Formula 1 crowds flocked to the oceanside, palm-tree-lined

17:09avenues of the Florida coast starting in 2022.

17:13Demand was high, with 242,000 people attending over three days, more than 2.6 million tuning

17:19in on TV, and secondary market tickets reaching $32,000.

17:25And then, in 2023, the company added that casino-lit asphalt of the Nevada desert, and

17:30some 315,000 people attended, over the weekend.

17:34With the race starting at 11pm to satisfy European time zones and capitalize on the

17:37lights of Sin City, cars careened down the infamous Las Vegas Strip and through that

17:42infamous Vegas lot that F1 had purchased for $240 million, demonstrating the company's

17:48enduring commitment to the city and the sport.

17:51F1 was firmly in the American zeitgeist, and globally it had entirely reversed its path

17:56of decline.

17:58Although, for all that drive to survive in the early 2020s did for F1, with time, the

18:04sport eventually, once again, crashed head-on into its fatal flaw.

18:08After a thrilling championship battle fought down to the last lap of the last race of 2021,

18:142022 saw a return to boring, predictable dominance—Verstappen and Red Bull just couldn't stop winning.

18:22In fact, 2023 was, statistically, the most dominant season in F1 history, with Verstappen

18:28breaking records for wins, podiums, points, laps led, percentage of wins, consecutive

18:33victories, and more.

18:34It's therefore no surprise that viewership has essentially stagnated since 2022, and

18:39the new American races started to struggle to sell out.

18:43Now is the true test for F1—they're faced with a challenge of continuing to capture

18:48the attention of that fresh young audience gathered five years ago, even as the sport

18:52continues its historical trend of bouncing between thrilling battles and mundane processions.

18:57But what will undoubtedly endure is F1's impact on the world of sports marketing.

19:03Almost every professional sports league has since commissioned a streaming show attempting

19:06to replicate the recipe of Drive to Survive.

19:08Look at any TikTok or Instagram page for a team, and there's a good shot it features

19:13the kinds of parasocial, personality-first strategies pioneered by F1.

19:17It turns out, characters don't need to win to captivate an audience.

19:22What F1 recognized before most was that, through making an audience care about the people underneath

19:28the helmet, audiences will tune in—even just to watch their favorite person lose.

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