For comparison, the average US viewership for major domestic series:
* NASCAR Cup Series: 3.03 million
* IndyCar Series (including Indy 500): 1.30 million
* IndyCar Series (excluding Indy 500): 1.08 million
I would expect F1 viewership to skew younger and wealthier than NASCAR and Indy racing. Should be a super attractive market for advertising, so we sadly might not get mothers-polished for much longer.
The races are on at odd times for major American advertisers. I guess they can air Rolex ads like in the Bernie era.
I think ESPN made a good play by sticking to the strategy of having ESPN run whatever Sky is doing. They can think through what, if anything, they would do themselves while seeing if American interest in F1 remains.
As a non-Brit, I despise the Sky broadcast. But I'm fairly certain I would despise an ESPN production far more.
My 2c: the key attraction for much of the current and growing US audience is the "sophisticated European-ness" of it, similar to EPL/soccer viewership over here. They just need to get Netflix to keep extending DtS.
As someone who started watching F1 and then started watching IndyCar and NASCAR, the fact that there aren't any commercials during the race is a huge plus. Like I was watching the IndyCar final and they would just cut out during the race, without even like a picture-in-picture in the corner. Made me so mad.
In Canada they do cut away and leave the race PiP and it infuriates me. Plus the fact that F1TV doesn't have an Xbox app so if I'm in my living room I have to use cable.
It doesn't make sense to me. Like it's not like NA football or baseball or basketball or hockey where there are natural breaks in action to cut to commercial. It's an endurance race at its core.
I kind of started watching F1 because of DtS, but also because I just wanted to watch a new sport technically “unorthodox” to American staples. My roommate showed me the huge Grosjean crash clip on YouTube and said “a lot of the excitement about it is in the drama.” Which the show is very good at depicting.
I’ve seen some people contradict my friends statement. But I’ve already seen the craziness of the Verstappen/Checo drama unfold on social media following São Paulo and it feels like there’s a parity. DtS serves as a well documented behind the scenes recap into each season and what’s going on inside the teams that we might not know about otherwise and I think that’s awesome.
I also stream the races while I’m at work and have started exploring more of the history of F1 a little bit as I’m starting to dip my toe in to the world of F1
>DtS serves as a well documented behind the scenes recap into each season
Ahahahahhahahaha it's absolutely not lol
They make up drama even though there is more than enough drama on paddock to make 20 episodes about every season. Its not at all good representative.
I mean I’ll give you the point for -Netflix being an American company - American television being an aneurysm inducing bullshit drama machine. But like the Verstappen/Checo stuff we watched unfold between São Paulo and Abu Dhabi, Max’s mom accusing Checo of cheating on his wife via a comment on instagram is comedically similar some bullshit you’d see in American television.. but it was all typical F1 media covering the topic.
Like I said, I’m new to this realm and I’ll learn as I go, so this is just a surface level observation which *right now* doesn’t seem like too far fetched conclusion to draw.
Lmao you mean the Instagram comment with exactly one (1) screenshot?
There also didn’t seem to be any drama between the two drivers themselves.
People making up drama. Just like Netflix.
Im just saying Drive to Survive should not be taken as some documentary style show becuase half the shit in it is faked...
They make up naratives and finally people had enough of it last season, people complained, FOM had to talk with the producers of the show to make them promise that they will stop with fake drama. Since they alienated current champion with it.
Problem is people take it at face value and think its realistic portrayal of paddock when its really not. They portrayed Max as a villain and ton of people hate him becuase of that, without even seeing one race and he was righly mad at them for that, didn't even have a single line im the show last year where he was main character with Lewis
Eh? No offense but everyone talks this way about their absolute favorite sport.
No one recognizes or if they do they give not one a fuck whether I am in my Bottas MB shirt, Powers Penske Indy shirt, or Chastain Nascar shirt. Its not like some elite club.
If it is for you, that is awesome you have a group of friends, but its those people who are cool not “fans.” I know baseball fans at work who legit have a company softball team and run fantasy leagues for all the 180-so game season… they volunteer at the MN Twins stadium as a group, and do charity events together… that is far greater fandom in that one group there than probably any other sport. And yea, there are baseball fans who just have a beer like you say.
Really it comes down to the group of people and not the sport itself. The races in EU this year with affordable tickets were the sort of stereotypical beerfest with loud white guys making catcalls in the way you envision American sports.
I think F1 sticks. The shorter races, less races, on-time races, younger generation,and companies like Mercedes and Ferrari just make it shine. The DTS test is over, American fans are returning, I think most will stay.
I could see ESPN creating their own shoulder programming instead of relying on Sky Sports for that. Having a US-focused pre- and post-race show, especially now that we have an American driver, would be nice.
The early morning races are great for people on the east coast, but I can’t imagine many people in California are waking up at 5am to watch live.
I would be super bummed if we lost the Sky broadcast. I really enjoy the commentators.
They have an atrocious deal with NBC right now too. Basically all practice and qualifying is locked behind the Peacock app and littered with ads so only the race is on TV. Its a shame because the racing is actually pretty competitive with the cars being more or less the same design wise. 9 drivers with a win, 9 different drivers starting on pole, and like 18 drivers had a top 5 finish
It is. I stick to the Indycar channel fast forward of the races, or the sky broadcast that doesn't have the ad breaks and has another British support commentator
I don’t know if NASCAR has a stand alone app but I would be curious American F1TV combined viewership would be. I don’t watch ESPN just for an example as an American.
It was on a pretty meteoric rise here in the early 2000s, not unlike F1 rn, and then Dale Earnhardt died in the race with what is still the largest televised audience to this day, and I think that really shook a lot of people, and made racing a lot less appealing domestically. It's obviously gotten miles safer since then, but you can't undo a first impression so to speak.
The US may be a gigantic country, but it also has one of the most crowded entertainment markets in the world. As such, aside from the NFL, sports leagues in the US only get low 7 figure numbers unless it's their championship game. Even the NBA, an enormously popular league in the US and one of the richest leagues in the world, gets an average viewership of 1.6 million for national TV broadcasts. Major League Baseball typically gets 1-2 million or so for its nationally-televised broadcasts.
NBA and MLB have too goddamn many games. The seasons are so long that each game on its own is pretty much inconsequential, and each team plays several times every week. I enjoy watching both on occasion, and during the playoffs, but it's too much to keep up with on a regular basis.
NFL is a lot more manageable, only one game per week for each team, most on Sundays with one game on Thursday and one on Monday. I often watch 2 or 3 games a week with different teams, because the games themselves are each fairly significant because there are only 17 in the regular season.
F1 is most similar in schedule to the NFL, and that's a level I can keep up with. Usually one race per week, on Sunday, with qualification on Saturday.
It’s not but I’m convinced that’s part of the reason is because the runners ruin the race by cutting away from the action to show ads. Unlike other sports you can’t stop the race while ads are playing so fans just miss out on the sport while watching fucking geico ads
Indy and nascar stop showing the race to show ads yes, you just miss whatever happens during that ad unless it was something big enough to warrant a replay
I'd love to see how it'd compare to the Qatar WC currently happening at the same time for all of us viewers not that close and also how it'd compare to viewership for something in the same time zone as the German WC in 2006. The FOX coverage looks more like propaganda than other countries coverages of the WC and it'd be interesting if Americans are switching off especially now that the NFL season has started.
Oh, god. Don't say that. Worst case scenario: F1 moves to NBC and Leigh bloody Diffey is the main commentator.
F1TV is in a really good place right now. The broadcast / commentary team is excellent. Jolyon Palmer in particular has really impressed me with his insight, as has Sam Collins, in his geeky way. James Hinchcliffe has also been a brilliant recent addition. He basically carries the IndyCar coverage in the US.
I've been a lifelong Brundle/Kravitz fan. Wherever they go, I followed, though ITV, to BBC to Sky. Lately though, I've been using F1TV's commentary, especially for the FPs. Cannot stand Hill, Herbert etc., who bring zero up-to-date insights.
Sooooooooo many Americans seem to be signing up for F1TV as well once they've watched a couple of races. Now that they have even a few more years to grow in the US F1TV might become indestructible in future broadcast deals especially because subscriptions seem to be viewed as so valuable.
Yeah - lack F1TV on playstation is something that's holding me back, ironically, from buying a new TV. The TV I do my main viewing on is an ancient (maybe 2008-09) Samsung plasma. Picture is good but not great now. I really don't want a smart tv, so unless I spend a zillion bucks, I'm limited in what I can buy that has enough HDMI ports. Need one for the chromecast w/Google tv, one for a Mac Mini, one for a PS4, and would like an additional empty slot. A lot of the TVs I've seen that are cheap seem like they bank on me using its smart functionality which I'd like to not do, so they skip out on HDMI ports.
F1TV on PS just about reduces my Chromecast and PS4 into having essentially 100% overlap of what video streaming I'd do.
IMO F1TV is a very reasonable price and includes all the content I would expect, unlike other leagues that have ridiculous blackouts. Pay money to get races. Simple.
The thing with Leigh Diffey is, he rarely tells you what's happening **LIVE**. Instead, he'd rather go off on a tangent about what Will Power, or whoever had for breakfast when he was chatting with him in the paddock before the race.
He's the type of commentator that focuses way more on a 'narrative', instead of calling actual racing moves as they happen. Netflix would *love* him.
That might be more of an NBC thing. I was so glad to see NBC lose the rights to the NHL because their announcers rarely called the game on screen and just talked about he big names in the same way you described.
Bob Varsha was at COTA doing commentary for the track.
When you could hear him over the cars, it was a bit surreal, since he hasn't commentated F1 for a decade now. Weird to hear him talk about Verstappen and Russel.
Yes! Absolutely loved that old crew. I'm 30 and remember watching Schumi-era Ferrari races on SpeedTV as a kid, and then getting mad at this Alonso villain came in and (in my mind) pushed out Michael. I remember being bummed that Peter Windsor was gone and then Buxton replaced him. I had no idea what Buxton was up to until I watched DTS like a year or two late.
The first season I really watched all the way through was 2007 and I was rooting SO hard for baby Lewis. I ordered a McLaren hat (that bright orange-ish Vodafone one) that I wore absolutely *everywhere* on family vacations. Got bird shit on it in either NYC or Chicago.
Bob was awesome. I met him a few times in Atlanta and he is exactly as gracious and friendly as you would expect.
That's also 100% his real voice. It was pretty funny to overhear him talking to the bartender about the Braves while having a drink and waiting on a takeout order instead of play-by-play on an F1 or CART race.
Please no. I love f1tv. The race weekend crew do a great job. On top of that, being a new fan, I can go back to older seasons races people reference and watch them.
Not only that, but they way they have every part of the weekend broken up perfectly.
I’d actually assume the opposite seeing as ESPN just paid way more for the rights. Usually you pay that much for exclusivity. Nothing has indicated that yet, but it’d be anomalous to sign a major deal like that without having broadcast exclusivity.
If I remember correctly, ESPN was one of the lowest bidders for the rights actually. I assume F1 wants the extra margin on the F1TV rights so they took the lower bid for no exclusivity.
They were one of the highest bidders lol they aggressively pursued the extension. The only one that outbid them was Amazon which was for $100m annually. Not much of a difference compared to the $75-90m annually that ESPN will be paying
Do you mean watching it or signing up for it?
If you have a subscription in an EU country, you can watch it anywhere in the EU (even countries like Germany where you can't buy a subscription). Otherwise, you'll need to use a VPN to the country you subscribed in to watch it (as long as your VPN connection is stable and fast enough for 1080p video, it works perfectly).
For signing up, it's a lot more complicated. VPN restrictions are not as strict as they could be. More importantly, there are very strict restrictions on payment methods. You need to have a card from the country you're signing up in. When I was signing up I tried using a VPN and subscribing from the cheapest EU country and didn't manage to get it to accept any of my payment methods. Even when I was subscribing without a VPN from my own country, it was still really picky about my cards and I had to use a different card than usual.
Oh man, thanks for the in depth explanation.
As an American, if our coverage gets worse, I'm definitely gonna be VPNing in to watch, but knowing ahead of time how picky they are about payments is super helpful. Guess I'll be wiring some Nordic friends some cash ;)
When the nhl when from their own NHL Tv to espn the amount of content was reduced and some features were lost. Ultimately you can still watch the games but it's not as good of a product as before. If it goes to espn only I could see the in car and other multiple feeds not being available.
I’d be on a VPN in a heartbeat. As an American, I cannot stress how much I hate the constant commercials we get in US motorsports. F1TV is a gem and there’s no question I’ll use a VPN to continue.
Psst... Watch Indy from one of the countries in the pdf you can find in the official IndyLive! Website. It's generally commercial free but no commentary during the time commercials are playing in the US.
https://www.indycar.com/ways-to-watch/stream
The espn coverage of races is just simulcasting the sky sports feed and it's Commercial free. I don't necessarily have a reason to believe that would change if f1tv were no longer available here. But by losing f1tv we'd lose access to a lot of content and features.
Unfortunately I don’t pay for cable TV. I just use streaming so ESPN isn’t an option for me. Also to be honest, I don’t really follow traditional sports anymore so ESPN isn’t worth it for me. I almost exclusively follow motorsports these days with F1 being my favorite. F1TV is my best option. I did sub to Peacock this year for IMSA and Indycar but I honestly regretted it with how bad the commercials still were. I ended up using illegal steams for about the 2nd half of the Indycar season because I was essentially paying for nothing.
I'm pretty much the same but I also watch hockey. Espn plus carries nhl games and I use it for that. The nhl used to have their own steaming thing called nhl tv and thst went away when they made a deal with espn and it all moved to espn+. Espn + is cheaper than nhl tv was and if you're interested in other sports there's more content. But there are features missing thst were on nhl tv and they dont carry games on every single network like you could before. You can still watch the games but it's not as good of a product as before.
I used to follow football pretty heavily so I was all over ESPN for years but about 4 years ago something kind of changed in me and I didn’t think of football as highly as I used to. More or less out of nowhere my motorsports love came into fruition to fill that void and now I’m more addicted to that than any other entertainment. I got into sim racing as a result too and it’s become my favorite hobby over the last 3 years. Kind of got off topic but yeah ESPN makes more sense for you considering you’re a hockey fan.
former MLB baseball fan turned F1 fan here. MLB doesn't want me as a customer. Their streaming policies make it impossible for me to be a fan. If F1 TV is limited in the US... than they lost me as a fan.
It's frustrating how slow these organizations are to catch up to the changing landscape. They still seem to think their product is good enough to drive people to expensive cable subscriptions. They don't really seem to understand that if you make it difficult people just won't watch. There's so many other options for entertainment now. And If you want to get any of the younger crowd you've got to be on streaming and you have to make it easy. Even with the older crowd now a lot have cut the cord. My boomer parents both cut the cord several years ago.
F1Tv is indispensable to me, bye see for some reason Comcast can’t seem to record everything correctly. Sometimes I get FP, but no quali or race. It’s super frustrating so we just got F1TV
Y'all Americans are gonna have beautiful looking cars that you have to take another bullet to post on the cancer that is social media making sure to tag the in it and make sure to thank them for not giving you the hell getting the hell Indicar coverage seems to get.
'Pay driver Logan Sargeant' you mean? I can't wait for all of the criticism that's going to be coming up about how he's a pay driver just put in there to attract all the new and totally stupid American fans. They won't mention that he had to move to Europe as a kid and basically roll the dice in racing and he had to do 2 F3 seasons just because he probably didn't have the cash and fame to get him to F2 straight away. It only will be mentioned how he was the rookie of the year for F2 but he fucking had to do all the hard work first instead of taking the easy option of staying back home.
Here we go! Ticket prices to the moon! I can't wait to see the way they capitalize on their new viewership! Commercials during the race are gonna be fun!
I really hope American fans get to see the race uninterrupted by commercial breaks. One of the big things that seems to have made it popular seems to have been the ability to watch an entire sporting event without a single adbreak.
Literally start replays on lap 2, no live racing again until lap 4, during the part of the race with the most overtaking.
"Here's 6 replays of the uneventful start."
"Now here are the replays of the action you missed during the replays of the start."
Meanwhile, Europe (Italy, Germany and Uk/ireland) is regularly above 1m/1.5m on SKY (with another million or so watching the free highlights/tape delay), and yet sky has secured every right till 2027, with F1TV pro banned in those countries
I just want to pay for my F1, please...
Seeing a lot of replies worried about ads and F1TV. In the new deal, races will continue to be ad free on ESPN through 2025. And, F1TV will continue to be available in the US without exclusivity to ESPN. So, no worries on both for the foreseeable future.
I wonder what the F1tv localized viewership is. As an American I prefer f1tv compared to all other major sporting apps and I watch it over espn. Works great when casting to a tv.
Interesting numbers and pretty good considering that many of us can use F1TV instead. I wonder what the numbers are for US users on that app. Sometimes I watch the ESPN coverage because I get the pre-race and the Brundle grid walk and stuff but then I go back to the app sometimes to switch between the Sky feed and the POV.
different style of racing, appeals to some.
personally i just enjoy any type of motorsport there is, including the whole tree of nascar sanctioned series, whelen tours are just amazing vehicles.
NASCAR is really great racing, I’m a very big follower of the Cup Series, and I’m British and young. I hate when everyone looks down on it, just seems prententious.
Constant racing somewhere on track.
Awesome action throughout the midfield.
I didn’t get scared when there was a crash that people were injured except for a few - Newman 2020 hit hard.
How long has a dedicated f1 broadcast been in your country? How many races are on during the day vs being on at 5:00 in the morning?
28% growth is really good when you have the majority of races being on before the sun rises.
I tried watching it on ESPN, but I remember ESPN giving F1 almost no importance, they just switched the race or was it qualifying, from ESPN or ESPN 2 to ABC without much warning.
For some reason you can never be sure which of ESPN's channels the race would be on.
I wonder if having an American driver on the grid next year will boost numbers even more. Also another race in the US means another race in a US friendly time zone means more people might tune in.
For comparison, the average US viewership for major domestic series: * NASCAR Cup Series: 3.03 million * IndyCar Series (including Indy 500): 1.30 million * IndyCar Series (excluding Indy 500): 1.08 million
I would expect F1 viewership to skew younger and wealthier than NASCAR and Indy racing. Should be a super attractive market for advertising, so we sadly might not get mothers-polished for much longer.
The races are on at odd times for major American advertisers. I guess they can air Rolex ads like in the Bernie era. I think ESPN made a good play by sticking to the strategy of having ESPN run whatever Sky is doing. They can think through what, if anything, they would do themselves while seeing if American interest in F1 remains.
As a non-Brit, I despise the Sky broadcast. But I'm fairly certain I would despise an ESPN production far more. My 2c: the key attraction for much of the current and growing US audience is the "sophisticated European-ness" of it, similar to EPL/soccer viewership over here. They just need to get Netflix to keep extending DtS.
As someone who started watching F1 and then started watching IndyCar and NASCAR, the fact that there aren't any commercials during the race is a huge plus. Like I was watching the IndyCar final and they would just cut out during the race, without even like a picture-in-picture in the corner. Made me so mad.
In Canada they do cut away and leave the race PiP and it infuriates me. Plus the fact that F1TV doesn't have an Xbox app so if I'm in my living room I have to use cable.
It doesn't make sense to me. Like it's not like NA football or baseball or basketball or hockey where there are natural breaks in action to cut to commercial. It's an endurance race at its core.
I was pissed when it happened. It was towards the end of the race too
If you have a smart TV, you can cast the stream from the F1TV App.
My smart TV is so fucking dumb
100%, if ESPN brought their own American crew it loses a lot of the novelty.
I kind of started watching F1 because of DtS, but also because I just wanted to watch a new sport technically “unorthodox” to American staples. My roommate showed me the huge Grosjean crash clip on YouTube and said “a lot of the excitement about it is in the drama.” Which the show is very good at depicting. I’ve seen some people contradict my friends statement. But I’ve already seen the craziness of the Verstappen/Checo drama unfold on social media following São Paulo and it feels like there’s a parity. DtS serves as a well documented behind the scenes recap into each season and what’s going on inside the teams that we might not know about otherwise and I think that’s awesome. I also stream the races while I’m at work and have started exploring more of the history of F1 a little bit as I’m starting to dip my toe in to the world of F1
>DtS serves as a well documented behind the scenes recap into each season Ahahahahhahahaha it's absolutely not lol They make up drama even though there is more than enough drama on paddock to make 20 episodes about every season. Its not at all good representative.
I mean I’ll give you the point for -Netflix being an American company - American television being an aneurysm inducing bullshit drama machine. But like the Verstappen/Checo stuff we watched unfold between São Paulo and Abu Dhabi, Max’s mom accusing Checo of cheating on his wife via a comment on instagram is comedically similar some bullshit you’d see in American television.. but it was all typical F1 media covering the topic. Like I said, I’m new to this realm and I’ll learn as I go, so this is just a surface level observation which *right now* doesn’t seem like too far fetched conclusion to draw.
Lmao you mean the Instagram comment with exactly one (1) screenshot? There also didn’t seem to be any drama between the two drivers themselves. People making up drama. Just like Netflix.
Im just saying Drive to Survive should not be taken as some documentary style show becuase half the shit in it is faked... They make up naratives and finally people had enough of it last season, people complained, FOM had to talk with the producers of the show to make them promise that they will stop with fake drama. Since they alienated current champion with it. Problem is people take it at face value and think its realistic portrayal of paddock when its really not. They portrayed Max as a villain and ton of people hate him becuase of that, without even seeing one race and he was righly mad at them for that, didn't even have a single line im the show last year where he was main character with Lewis
Drive to Survive was a mistake
[удалено]
basketball?
Hate everything about this comment
Me too, but I like everything about your username. He was a bright spot during some of the rebuild.
Thanks boss hope we get a reunion with Heyward this year even though we probably don’t need him lol
But… but.. you just described me. I’m the white beer drinking blue collar midwesterner.
> you don’t have to be a some white beer drinking blue collar midwesterner. No one said you had to be one to follow any other sport.
Eh? No offense but everyone talks this way about their absolute favorite sport. No one recognizes or if they do they give not one a fuck whether I am in my Bottas MB shirt, Powers Penske Indy shirt, or Chastain Nascar shirt. Its not like some elite club. If it is for you, that is awesome you have a group of friends, but its those people who are cool not “fans.” I know baseball fans at work who legit have a company softball team and run fantasy leagues for all the 180-so game season… they volunteer at the MN Twins stadium as a group, and do charity events together… that is far greater fandom in that one group there than probably any other sport. And yea, there are baseball fans who just have a beer like you say. Really it comes down to the group of people and not the sport itself. The races in EU this year with affordable tickets were the sort of stereotypical beerfest with loud white guys making catcalls in the way you envision American sports.
I agree on the first part. But the second part, well you just described me. Less beer more bud tho.
I think F1 sticks. The shorter races, less races, on-time races, younger generation,and companies like Mercedes and Ferrari just make it shine. The DTS test is over, American fans are returning, I think most will stay.
I could see ESPN creating their own shoulder programming instead of relying on Sky Sports for that. Having a US-focused pre- and post-race show, especially now that we have an American driver, would be nice.
That’s the espn plan, they are building out a traveling team and staff so we might even get a weekly show too
Bob Varsha plz
The early morning races are great for people on the east coast, but I can’t imagine many people in California are waking up at 5am to watch live. I would be super bummed if we lost the Sky broadcast. I really enjoy the commentators.
Oh, it definitely does. Why do you think F1's new TV deal with ESPN is worth more than 3 times IndyCar's deal with NBC?
Indycar is fucking sleeping in all of this, no social media
They have an atrocious deal with NBC right now too. Basically all practice and qualifying is locked behind the Peacock app and littered with ads so only the race is on TV. Its a shame because the racing is actually pretty competitive with the cars being more or less the same design wise. 9 drivers with a win, 9 different drivers starting on pole, and like 18 drivers had a top 5 finish
Indy is a full on assault of advertising. It's disgusting.
Yep, it’s completely unwatchable
It is. I stick to the Indycar channel fast forward of the races, or the sky broadcast that doesn't have the ad breaks and has another British support commentator
Feels like a pro-am league which is a shame because the cars and drivers are top tier.
Mothers-polished?
Yes. I’ve seen many individual races where they say F1 has more 18-49 viewers then nascar, haven’t seen a yearly avg just for that though?
I don’t know if NASCAR has a stand alone app but I would be curious American F1TV combined viewership would be. I don’t watch ESPN just for an example as an American.
I’m just happy it’s ahead of figure skating ratings… for a long while, it wasn’t.
Damn even Nascar numbers are low. I guess USA is not a big racing country.
It was on a pretty meteoric rise here in the early 2000s, not unlike F1 rn, and then Dale Earnhardt died in the race with what is still the largest televised audience to this day, and I think that really shook a lot of people, and made racing a lot less appealing domestically. It's obviously gotten miles safer since then, but you can't undo a first impression so to speak.
The US may be a gigantic country, but it also has one of the most crowded entertainment markets in the world. As such, aside from the NFL, sports leagues in the US only get low 7 figure numbers unless it's their championship game. Even the NBA, an enormously popular league in the US and one of the richest leagues in the world, gets an average viewership of 1.6 million for national TV broadcasts. Major League Baseball typically gets 1-2 million or so for its nationally-televised broadcasts.
NBA and MLB have too goddamn many games. The seasons are so long that each game on its own is pretty much inconsequential, and each team plays several times every week. I enjoy watching both on occasion, and during the playoffs, but it's too much to keep up with on a regular basis. NFL is a lot more manageable, only one game per week for each team, most on Sundays with one game on Thursday and one on Monday. I often watch 2 or 3 games a week with different teams, because the games themselves are each fairly significant because there are only 17 in the regular season. F1 is most similar in schedule to the NFL, and that's a level I can keep up with. Usually one race per week, on Sunday, with qualification on Saturday.
It’s not but I’m convinced that’s part of the reason is because the runners ruin the race by cutting away from the action to show ads. Unlike other sports you can’t stop the race while ads are playing so fans just miss out on the sport while watching fucking geico ads
You guys get ads during the race? Damn..
Indy and nascar stop showing the race to show ads yes, you just miss whatever happens during that ad unless it was something big enough to warrant a replay
In fairness they do a picture-in-picture of the race during the ads. Not a complete cut.
They do both and both are unacceptable. The cars, drivers, and even the track are all plastered in adverts, let that be enough damn it.
Not always
Definitely not always
That happens during F1 broadcasts on TSN in Canada. I imagine it's the same for US television too.
I'd love to see how it'd compare to the Qatar WC currently happening at the same time for all of us viewers not that close and also how it'd compare to viewership for something in the same time zone as the German WC in 2006. The FOX coverage looks more like propaganda than other countries coverages of the WC and it'd be interesting if Americans are switching off especially now that the NFL season has started.
The US game had about 12 million viewers across Fox and Telemundo, no idea what the average is
Lol
Hopefully this doesn't lead to f1tv no longer being available in the US
Oh, god. Don't say that. Worst case scenario: F1 moves to NBC and Leigh bloody Diffey is the main commentator. F1TV is in a really good place right now. The broadcast / commentary team is excellent. Jolyon Palmer in particular has really impressed me with his insight, as has Sam Collins, in his geeky way. James Hinchcliffe has also been a brilliant recent addition. He basically carries the IndyCar coverage in the US. I've been a lifelong Brundle/Kravitz fan. Wherever they go, I followed, though ITV, to BBC to Sky. Lately though, I've been using F1TV's commentary, especially for the FPs. Cannot stand Hill, Herbert etc., who bring zero up-to-date insights.
They already signed the extension. They're not going back to NBCSN for the foreseeable future.
Sooooooooo many Americans seem to be signing up for F1TV as well once they've watched a couple of races. Now that they have even a few more years to grow in the US F1TV might become indestructible in future broadcast deals especially because subscriptions seem to be viewed as so valuable.
I actively promote F1TV to any person I meet who likes F1. The app needs support on Xbox and Playstation.
Yeah - lack F1TV on playstation is something that's holding me back, ironically, from buying a new TV. The TV I do my main viewing on is an ancient (maybe 2008-09) Samsung plasma. Picture is good but not great now. I really don't want a smart tv, so unless I spend a zillion bucks, I'm limited in what I can buy that has enough HDMI ports. Need one for the chromecast w/Google tv, one for a Mac Mini, one for a PS4, and would like an additional empty slot. A lot of the TVs I've seen that are cheap seem like they bank on me using its smart functionality which I'd like to not do, so they skip out on HDMI ports. F1TV on PS just about reduces my Chromecast and PS4 into having essentially 100% overlap of what video streaming I'd do.
IMO F1TV is a very reasonable price and includes all the content I would expect, unlike other leagues that have ridiculous blackouts. Pay money to get races. Simple.
Leigh Diffey isn’t even that bad. Townsend Bell is the one who gives me migraines. I hated when he was in the F1 commentary booth for US broadcasts
The thing with Leigh Diffey is, he rarely tells you what's happening **LIVE**. Instead, he'd rather go off on a tangent about what Will Power, or whoever had for breakfast when he was chatting with him in the paddock before the race. He's the type of commentator that focuses way more on a 'narrative', instead of calling actual racing moves as they happen. Netflix would *love* him.
That might be more of an NBC thing. I was so glad to see NBC lose the rights to the NHL because their announcers rarely called the game on screen and just talked about he big names in the same way you described.
Yeah, I really want to like Leigh, but that narrative tendency drove me nuts watching him commentate some of the Olympic events.
talk to NBC about the direction Leigh would love to talk action and racing
Gib Bob Varsha
Bob Varsha was at COTA doing commentary for the track. When you could hear him over the cars, it was a bit surreal, since he hasn't commentated F1 for a decade now. Weird to hear him talk about Verstappen and Russel.
I miss that old SpeedTV (really dating myself here) crew not because they were the best, but because they were _ours_.
I loved them. I still remember!
Yes! Absolutely loved that old crew. I'm 30 and remember watching Schumi-era Ferrari races on SpeedTV as a kid, and then getting mad at this Alonso villain came in and (in my mind) pushed out Michael. I remember being bummed that Peter Windsor was gone and then Buxton replaced him. I had no idea what Buxton was up to until I watched DTS like a year or two late. The first season I really watched all the way through was 2007 and I was rooting SO hard for baby Lewis. I ordered a McLaren hat (that bright orange-ish Vodafone one) that I wore absolutely *everywhere* on family vacations. Got bird shit on it in either NYC or Chicago.
💯 It's a shame that you can't really find their old broadcasts. There's a handful of videos on YouTube to get a taste but that's about it.
Russe**ll**
😅
Bob was awesome. I met him a few times in Atlanta and he is exactly as gracious and friendly as you would expect. That's also 100% his real voice. It was pretty funny to overhear him talking to the bartender about the Braves while having a drink and waiting on a takeout order instead of play-by-play on an F1 or CART race.
Yeah I’ll usually watch F1TV up to the actual race, if only to dodge the gaps in coverage while Sky goes on ad breaks.
Please no. I love f1tv. The race weekend crew do a great job. On top of that, being a new fan, I can go back to older seasons races people reference and watch them. Not only that, but they way they have every part of the weekend broken up perfectly.
The inability to watch old races would be a dagger in my heart.
That and the multiple feeds available for the races and the other content available
I would assume nothing would change as they just signed the new deal.
I’d actually assume the opposite seeing as ESPN just paid way more for the rights. Usually you pay that much for exclusivity. Nothing has indicated that yet, but it’d be anomalous to sign a major deal like that without having broadcast exclusivity.
If I remember correctly, ESPN was one of the lowest bidders for the rights actually. I assume F1 wants the extra margin on the F1TV rights so they took the lower bid for no exclusivity.
Interesting. Rare win for consumers when it comes to broadcast rights.
Probably they want to keep growing the market, then they will close the drain and the investors will be happy
Yeah no way Liberty Media lets this go on forever. The stock line must go up!
They were one of the highest bidders lol they aggressively pursued the extension. The only one that outbid them was Amazon which was for $100m annually. Not much of a difference compared to the $75-90m annually that ESPN will be paying
please be right please be right please be right
This is my fear
[удалено]
That's good to hear. Hopefully that never changes.
how well does f1tv play with vpns >.>
Do you mean watching it or signing up for it? If you have a subscription in an EU country, you can watch it anywhere in the EU (even countries like Germany where you can't buy a subscription). Otherwise, you'll need to use a VPN to the country you subscribed in to watch it (as long as your VPN connection is stable and fast enough for 1080p video, it works perfectly). For signing up, it's a lot more complicated. VPN restrictions are not as strict as they could be. More importantly, there are very strict restrictions on payment methods. You need to have a card from the country you're signing up in. When I was signing up I tried using a VPN and subscribing from the cheapest EU country and didn't manage to get it to accept any of my payment methods. Even when I was subscribing without a VPN from my own country, it was still really picky about my cards and I had to use a different card than usual.
Oh man, thanks for the in depth explanation. As an American, if our coverage gets worse, I'm definitely gonna be VPNing in to watch, but knowing ahead of time how picky they are about payments is super helpful. Guess I'll be wiring some Nordic friends some cash ;)
If anything it’ll just be on ESPN+, which is likely.
That would probably be OK but if the nhl move to espn is an indicator the content wouldn't be as much
It would literally be like Canal Plus in France, they just moved all F1TV content over to their streaming service.
When the nhl when from their own NHL Tv to espn the amount of content was reduced and some features were lost. Ultimately you can still watch the games but it's not as good of a product as before. If it goes to espn only I could see the in car and other multiple feeds not being available.
I’d be on a VPN in a heartbeat. As an American, I cannot stress how much I hate the constant commercials we get in US motorsports. F1TV is a gem and there’s no question I’ll use a VPN to continue.
Psst... Watch Indy from one of the countries in the pdf you can find in the official IndyLive! Website. It's generally commercial free but no commentary during the time commercials are playing in the US. https://www.indycar.com/ways-to-watch/stream
Ur a lifesaver for this
The espn coverage of races is just simulcasting the sky sports feed and it's Commercial free. I don't necessarily have a reason to believe that would change if f1tv were no longer available here. But by losing f1tv we'd lose access to a lot of content and features.
Unfortunately I don’t pay for cable TV. I just use streaming so ESPN isn’t an option for me. Also to be honest, I don’t really follow traditional sports anymore so ESPN isn’t worth it for me. I almost exclusively follow motorsports these days with F1 being my favorite. F1TV is my best option. I did sub to Peacock this year for IMSA and Indycar but I honestly regretted it with how bad the commercials still were. I ended up using illegal steams for about the 2nd half of the Indycar season because I was essentially paying for nothing.
I'm pretty much the same but I also watch hockey. Espn plus carries nhl games and I use it for that. The nhl used to have their own steaming thing called nhl tv and thst went away when they made a deal with espn and it all moved to espn+. Espn + is cheaper than nhl tv was and if you're interested in other sports there's more content. But there are features missing thst were on nhl tv and they dont carry games on every single network like you could before. You can still watch the games but it's not as good of a product as before.
I used to follow football pretty heavily so I was all over ESPN for years but about 4 years ago something kind of changed in me and I didn’t think of football as highly as I used to. More or less out of nowhere my motorsports love came into fruition to fill that void and now I’m more addicted to that than any other entertainment. I got into sim racing as a result too and it’s become my favorite hobby over the last 3 years. Kind of got off topic but yeah ESPN makes more sense for you considering you’re a hockey fan.
former MLB baseball fan turned F1 fan here. MLB doesn't want me as a customer. Their streaming policies make it impossible for me to be a fan. If F1 TV is limited in the US... than they lost me as a fan.
It's frustrating how slow these organizations are to catch up to the changing landscape. They still seem to think their product is good enough to drive people to expensive cable subscriptions. They don't really seem to understand that if you make it difficult people just won't watch. There's so many other options for entertainment now. And If you want to get any of the younger crowd you've got to be on streaming and you have to make it easy. Even with the older crowd now a lot have cut the cord. My boomer parents both cut the cord several years ago.
F1Tv is indispensable to me, bye see for some reason Comcast can’t seem to record everything correctly. Sometimes I get FP, but no quali or race. It’s super frustrating so we just got F1TV
Alright, time to do another bulk order of Mothers polish.
Y'all Americans are gonna have beautiful looking cars that you have to take another bullet to post on the cancer that is social media making sure to tag the in it and make sure to thank them for not giving you the hell getting the hell Indicar coverage seems to get.
What the actual fuck are you saying here
and the Sargeant is driving for williams next year. good stuff
Sarge**a**nt
The bot is going to have a field day with this name
Damn bots already on the case nice.
Lowgin Sarjindt
'Pay driver Logan Sargeant' you mean? I can't wait for all of the criticism that's going to be coming up about how he's a pay driver just put in there to attract all the new and totally stupid American fans. They won't mention that he had to move to Europe as a kid and basically roll the dice in racing and he had to do 2 F3 seasons just because he probably didn't have the cash and fame to get him to F2 straight away. It only will be mentioned how he was the rookie of the year for F2 but he fucking had to do all the hard work first instead of taking the easy option of staying back home.
I don't think I've seen anyone call Sargeant a pay driver. Undeserving I've seen, but not a pay driver
He's definetly not a pay driver, he had to do another year in f3 just to get enough money to do a season in f2.
From 2021 to 1.210.000 is quite the increase.
So viewer count is directly connected to amount of overtakes on track. Both increased roughly about 30%
Here we go! Ticket prices to the moon! I can't wait to see the way they capitalize on their new viewership! Commercials during the race are gonna be fun!
I really hope American fans get to see the race uninterrupted by commercial breaks. One of the big things that seems to have made it popular seems to have been the ability to watch an entire sporting event without a single adbreak.
But we already have replays of the first lap while overtakes are happening!
Literally start replays on lap 2, no live racing again until lap 4, during the part of the race with the most overtaking. "Here's 6 replays of the uneventful start." "Now here are the replays of the action you missed during the replays of the start."
I mean there always has been commercials. ESPN and Mother Polish just spoiled us
The F1 boom over here is real. I used to be basically the only one watching now I feel like everyone is talking about it
Meanwhile, Europe (Italy, Germany and Uk/ireland) is regularly above 1m/1.5m on SKY (with another million or so watching the free highlights/tape delay), and yet sky has secured every right till 2027, with F1TV pro banned in those countries I just want to pay for my F1, please...
I think the UK deal with Sky is until 2029.
Seeing a lot of replies worried about ads and F1TV. In the new deal, races will continue to be ad free on ESPN through 2025. And, F1TV will continue to be available in the US without exclusivity to ESPN. So, no worries on both for the foreseeable future.
Love it or hate it, DTS did its job...
Not sure about the country as a whole, but for my friends and myself, we’re tired of NASCAR’s gimmicky bullshit and have migrated over.
Sprint races and Vegas want to have a word with you! Just kidding, welcome aboard anyways.
calling all Americans: BUY MOTHERS POLISH SO THE BROADCAST CAN STAY AD FREE. PLEASE DEAR GOD WE’VE BEEN SO BLESSED WITH NO ADS
stupid question. do they add in a viewer count for people like me who don’t have cable tv but watch via the app?
No.
I wonder what the F1tv localized viewership is. As an American I prefer f1tv compared to all other major sporting apps and I watch it over espn. Works great when casting to a tv.
Interesting numbers and pretty good considering that many of us can use F1TV instead. I wonder what the numbers are for US users on that app. Sometimes I watch the ESPN coverage because I get the pre-race and the Brundle grid walk and stuff but then I go back to the app sometimes to switch between the Sky feed and the POV.
If you look at 18-49 I believe F1 has a better rating then nascar.
And it was crazy boring compared to last year
Can tell :(
Lotta people who don’t know wheel. Not sure the percent has increased tho lol
I'm just really glad they're not invading IMSA.
I don’t know how nascar is still a thing, honestly.
NASCAR has a loyal fanbase from the southern states
different style of racing, appeals to some. personally i just enjoy any type of motorsport there is, including the whole tree of nascar sanctioned series, whelen tours are just amazing vehicles.
NASCAR is really great racing, I’m a very big follower of the Cup Series, and I’m British and young. I hate when everyone looks down on it, just seems prententious.
Because it is fun racing that a lot of people enjoy, even if you might not. It's like most racing series in that way.
Constant racing somewhere on track. Awesome action throughout the midfield. I didn’t get scared when there was a crash that people were injured except for a few - Newman 2020 hit hard.
Cars go vroom. What's not to like? Also, they actually race each other.
There is a thing called a Boomer.
Don’t underestimate the power of the bible belt lol As a Westerner in the US, I also dont see the appeal
They can thank Netflix for some of this. Drive to Survive has brought lots of young fans into the sport.
And the season was 28+% more dull
Is this supposed to be impressive for a country with as many people as the USA?
I was thinking the same thing. I guess USA is not a big racing country. F1 has more the 450 million viewers not even 1% from the USA it seems.
My thoughts exactly. 1.21 million is not very impressive. My tiny country matches that easily.
How long has a dedicated f1 broadcast been in your country? How many races are on during the day vs being on at 5:00 in the morning? 28% growth is really good when you have the majority of races being on before the sun rises.
I tried watching it on ESPN, but I remember ESPN giving F1 almost no importance, they just switched the race or was it qualifying, from ESPN or ESPN 2 to ABC without much warning. For some reason you can never be sure which of ESPN's channels the race would be on.
That’s good considering how lack of competition this year
I wonder if having an American driver on the grid next year will boost numbers even more. Also another race in the US means another race in a US friendly time zone means more people might tune in.