In a fitting and triumphant farewell to one of the most remarkable turnarounds in American sports television history, ESPN concluded its eight-year run as the U.S. home of the Formula 1 World Championship by delivering the highest single-season viewership average ever recorded for the series on American screens.
F1’s biggest season yet
The 2025 season, featuring an expanded 24-race calendar, averaged an extraordinary 1.3 million viewers per race across ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC.
This figure eclipsed the previous all-time high of 1.21 million set in 2022—also on ESPN platforms—and represented a stunning 135% increase from the 554,000 average when the network reclaimed U.S. rights in 2018.
The season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on December 7, 2025, provided a spectacular capstone. Broadcast on ESPN starting in the early Sunday morning hours for U.S. audiences, the race averaged 1.5 million viewers and peaked at 1.8 million, according to Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel metrics.
It became the 16th individual race of the 2025 season to establish a new all-time viewership record for that specific event on U.S. television.
In total, 16 of the 24 grands prix in 2025 set new benchmarks: Australia, China, Monaco, Spain, Canada, Austria, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Azerbaijan, the United States Grand Prix at Austin, Mexico, Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi all posted the highest audiences ever seen for those races in the American market. Only three events—Miami, Singapore, and Brazil—did not show year-over-year growth, with the remaining 21 races all recording increases compared to 2024.
F1’s year-to-year growth
To fully appreciate the scale of this growth, consider the season-by-season trajectory since Formula 1 returned to ESPN networks in 2018 after a 20-year absence from the family of channels:
- 2018: 554,000 average viewers
- 2019: 672,000
- 2020: 608,000 (impacted by the pandemic-shortened calendar)
- 2021: 948,000
- 2022: 1.21 million (previous record)
- 2023: 1.11 million
- 2024: 1.10 million
- 2025: 1.30 million
That represents a remarkable 135% surge in average audience over eight seasons.
For additional context, Formula 1’s final year on NBC in 2017 averaged just 538,000 viewers—meaning the 2025 ESPN average was 142% higher than the series drew on its previous broadcast partner.
The numbers alone tell only part of the story. ESPN invested heavily in making Formula 1 feel like a marquee property rather than a niche import.
From the second race of the 2018 season onward, every grand prix was presented commercial-free during the live race window—a rarity in modern sports television.
The network produced on-site editions of SportsCenter from Miami, Austin, and Las Vegas, brought comprehensive studio programming to North American rounds, and aggressively cross-promoted the series across its vast portfolio of programming.
Creative marketing initiatives, such as the 2024 “Texas Takeover” campaign that tied together the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas with a high-profile Texas Longhorns football game on the same weekend, further amplified visibility.
Tune-in spots during NFL, College Football, NBA, and other flagship properties ensured F1 reached audiences far beyond its traditional motorsport base.
Much of the 2025 surge can be attributed to an enthralling Drivers’ Championship fight between McLaren’s Lando Norris and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen that remained mathematically alive until the very last lap of the season in Abu Dhabi.
That drama, combined with the continued popularity of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series and the addition of three glamorous U.S.-based races (Miami, Austin, and Las Vegas), along with F1: The Movie starring Brad Pitt, helped propel Formula 1 into mainstream American sports consciousness in a way few could have predicted a decade ago.
ESPN’s tenure also carried historical symmetry: Formula 1’s very first televised race in the United States aired on ABC in 1962, and the sport enjoyed a long previous run on ESPN itself from 1984 through 1997.
The 2018–2025 era effectively marked a homecoming—and one that ended on the highest possible note.
F1 to Apple TV
Beginning in 2026, Formula 1 will move exclusively to Apple TV in the United States under a five-year, $750 million agreement announced earlier in 2025.
The deal reportedly adds roughly $60 million per year to Formula 1’s U.S. media revenue compared to the ESPN contract. While the shift to a streaming-only platform introduces new variables for accessibility and discovery, the foundation ESPN helped build—an average audience 2.4 times larger than when it inherited the rights—leaves the series in robust health heading into its next chapter.
In eight short years, ESPN transformed Formula 1 from a cult favorite struggling to crack half a million viewers into a bona fide television phenomenon averaging 1.3 million—cementing 2025 as the perfect crescendo to one of the greatest broadcast success stories in recent sports history.
