The 2025 Formulation 1 season attracted report viewing figures for the US as ESPN concluded its eight-year run as the game’s American broadcaster.
The season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – a three-way title decider between Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri – averaged 1.5 million viewers on ESPN, peaking at 1.8m, primarily based on Nielsen Huge Information + Panel information. That marked the sixteenth occasion viewership report out of the 24 races in 2025, whereas 21 of the 24 had year-on-year will increase – solely Miami, Singapore and Brazil didn’t register a rise.
The complete season common of 1.3m per race is a brand new report for F1 within the U.S., beating the earlier mark of 1.21m from the 2022 season, and marking a 135% enhance on ESPN’s first season of its newest spell.
This was the ultimate season of ESPN’s eight-year run as F1’s broadcaster within the U.S., and the game noticed vital viewing determine progress throughout that point. The inaugural season again on the community that first broadcast F1 – the primary race aired in America was on ABC in 1962, whereas ESPN additionally held the rights from 1984-97 – attracted a median of 554,000 per race in 2018, rising to 672,000 the next 12 months.
The COVID-hit 2020 season noticed a median of 608,000 tune in for every race, earlier than an enormous soar to 948,000 in 2021 for the season-long championship combat between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
ESPN has averaged greater than one million per race since that time, with the previous two years seeing a median of 1.1m, having supplied commercial-free protection for the reason that second race of its stint.
Liberty Media took over F1 in early 2017 and dedicated to a higher deal with the U.S. market, that now boasts three races in Miami, Austin and Las Vegas. ESPN was granted the rights that had been beforehand held by NBC the 12 months after Liberty’s takeover, and 2025’s viewing figures mark a 142% enhance on the ultimate 12 months of the NBC deal.
Whereas ESPN bid to retain the rights, subsequent 12 months the F1 broadcasts give method to streaming on Apple TV, with Apple’s senior vice chairman of companies Eddy Cue lately saying the platform has “considerably extra” than the beforehand estimated 45 million subscribers.
