Is this the end of Formula One’s ‘Drive to Survive’ boost?

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I hope by now you’ve gotten over Sunday’s heartbreak. And I hope you also stayed off social media since then. It’s been a rough week if you’re an Indian cricket fan. I’d just like to quote the inimitable Inzamam-ul-Haq and say the boys played well! So, cheer up. 

I really need a break from cricket. Not that the jam-packed cricketing calendar gives a hoot. India already began a five-match T20 series against Australia yesterday, which broadcaster JioCinema unsurprisingly called “Mission Redemption” in a social media post. I’ll be giving the series a skip. Football fans can look forward to the return of the Premier League and other European leagues this weekend after the international break. I’ll be skipping that too since I’m a Manchester United fan. 😭

So, what do I watch now? I’ll tell you what it’s certainly not going to be: Formula One.

Has F1 peaked?

I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say that one of my best decisions this year was to not buy the F1 TV Pro subscription for ₹2,999 ($36). Indian F1 fans were up in arms earlier this year when Disney Star chose to not renew its media rights deal for the sport in India. As it turned out, no other broadcaster was interested in getting the rights either. 

A Disney+ Hotstar executive told me that F1 races used to get less than 200,000 concurrent viewers on average. Compare that with the tens of millions who turn up to watch cricket. Even Premier League football games get millions of viewers.

F1 eventually introduced its direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming service F1 TV in India, but at a price point that put it beyond the reach of most casual, non-hardcore fans. In a country where streaming platforms are offering live cricket for free, you’re not going to find many people who’d cough up ₹2,999 to watch Formula One. 

And the ones who did are probably regretting their decision. Formula One currently is a sport where 20 cars do laps around a circuit and Max Verstappen takes the chequered flag. The Dutchman sealed his third Formula One world championship in early October with five races left in the season at that point. Going into the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend, the 26-year-old has won 18 out of 21 races, including an incredible streak of 10 on the trot.

Verstappen had won the 2022 drivers championship on a canter as well, taking the chequered flag in 15 out of 22 races. It’s hard to believe that one of the most dramatic—and controversial—title races in F1 history took place just two years ago, when Verstappen pipped Lewis Hamilton to the championship on the last lap of the season. That unbelievable night in Abu Dhabi seems ages ago now.

Verstappen and Red Bull’s dominance isn’t good news for Formula One, no matter what the Dutchman thinks. Television viewership in the US, a key market, is reportedly down 8% from last year. In that sense, F1’s owner Liberty Media would be relieved that the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix last weekend drew 1.3 million viewers on ESPN, the third-highest of the season.

But that wasn’t before several initial hiccups, including an abandoned first practice session after Carlos Sainz drove his Ferrari over a loose manhole, heavily damaging the car. This resulted in a two-and-a-half-hour delay of the second practice session, which eventually began at 2.30 am local time. This was after a very over-the-top opening ceremony on the Las Vegas Strip, which left Verstappen saying he felt like “a clown”. He dismissed the whole spectacle as “99% show and 1% sporting event”. 

In the days and weeks leading up to the race, ticket prices and hotel room rates in Vegas also fell, reported Bloomberg, even as Liberty Media lowered profit expectations for the event due to unexpected costs. Unlike other races where a promoter pays Formula One millions of dollars for the hosting rights, the Las Vegas GP was organised by Liberty Media itself. The company pumped in $600 million to bring F1 to the entertainment capital of the world. 

It was all an effort to tap into the lucrative American market—the Las Vegas GP was the third race in the country this season. While F1 has historically been largely a European sport, with some interest in Asia as well, the Americans never really took to it until 2019 when Netflix released the first season of its docuseries Drive to Survive, which provides a behind-the-scenes look into the F1 circus. The series has been credited with almost single-handedly boosting the sport’s popularity worldwide, but especially in the US, after years of stagnancy. So much so that there’s now a Hollywood movie on F1 in the works starring Brad Pitt.

Even I started watching F1 again after a nearly decade-long gap in 2020 because of Drive to Survive. While I was an avid watcher of the sport in the 2000s, when Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso used to battle for the championship, I started losing interest in the 2010s. That was when Red Bull started dominating the circuit, with German driver Sebastian Vettel winning four titles in a row from 2010-13, out of which two were secured with point margins of 122 and 155.

Then, from 2014 onwards, it was the era of Mercedes. The German constructor won seven titles in a row, with Lewis Hamilton accounting for six. The closest anyone came to the British driver during this run was Vettel in 2017, who finished 46 points behind in his Ferrari. The release of Drive to Survive rekindled my interest, even as Hamilton continued winning titles in 2019 and 2020. And then, in 2021, we had that remarkable season with a nail-biting title race that went right up to the final lap.

The 2021 season was probably F1 at its peak in the Drive to Survive era. It seemed like 2022 would have more of the same, as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc won two of the first three races. But there has been no stopping Verstappen and Red Bull since then. F1 tweaks its engine regulations every few years in a bid to become more sustainable. It also introduced an annual cost cap for all teams during the pandemic, which is revised every year, to bring more parity to the field. Red Bull was even fined $7 million last year for breaching the cost cap in 2021. But as things stand, there’s no catching the Austrian manufacturer.

If Red Bull continues its dominance in 2024, it’ll be interesting to see how much longer F1 will be able to ride its recent popularity wave. Already, there are signs that its growth is stagnating in the US. Global viewership of Drive to Survive also shrunk 7% from a year ago, per Bloomberg. Its novelty factor has reduced after five seasons.

“The honeymoon period might be over in the U.S. for F1, but now you’re entering that slow-and-steady growth period of a long-term marriage,” Daniel Cohen, executive vice president of global media rights consulting for sports and entertainment agency Octagon, told the Sports Business Journal in August. “I don’t think whatsoever that there’s a slowdown to the point of a reversal for F1 … there’s still growth; it’s just more modest.”

F1’s next set of major engine regulation changes will only take place in 2026. So, you can expect at least two more years of Red Bull dominance. And with the calendar getting even more packed, with 24 races scheduled next season, it only increases the chances of the season getting boring.

Will Liberty Media be forced to step in? We’ll have to wait and see.

⚡️Quick Singles

🏏🏆 The men’s cricket World Cup final between India and Australia broke peak concurrency records on both television (130 million) and digital (59 million), according to Disney Star. The total television viewership for the final was 300 million, over half of the overall tournament’s mark of 518 million. Meanwhile, the International Cricket Council said that a record 1.25 million people attended matches at the stadiums. The previous record was 1.02 million during the 2015 men’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

⚽️🍬 Everton Football Club received an immediate 10-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s financial fair-play rules, leaving it 19th in the table. It’s a landmark ruling in English football—no other top-tier club has received such a big punishment for breaking spending rules. All eyes now on Manchester City, who have been accused of breaching the Premier League’s financial fair-play rules 115 times. An independent commission is still investigating the allegations.

⚽️🇸🇦 Saudi state-owned oil company Aramco is set to become Fifa’s biggest sponsor with a long-term deal that could be worth up to $100 million annually, according to the Times. The deal is expected to run up to 2034, when Saudi Arabia hosts the Fifa World Cup. The total payout until then could touch $1 billion. It isn’t clear whether the deal was agreed to before or after Saudi Arabia won the World Cup bid. Fifa earlier also relaxed its stadium policy to allow the Gulf nation to participate in the bid.

🏏💔 Indian cricketer Virat Kohli has parted ways with sports management and marketing firm Cornerstone Sport and Entertainment after more than a decade. The 35-year-old is expected to launch his own sports management company, reported The Economic Times. Kohli and his wife, actor Anushka Sharma, had incorporated a company called Nomad Management in May. 

⛳️📺 The much-anticipated launch of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s indoor golf league, TGL, has been pushed back by a year to January 2025. This was after the roof of the new arena that was built for the event in Florida collapsed following a power failure. The decision to delay the launch by a whole year was taken since broadcast partner ESPN had carved out primetime windows for the league in January 2024, which it won’t be able to do again until the same time the following year. 

📖 Weekend Reading

Why the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup format we saw in 2023 is not good for the game [The Indian Express]

Ghalib, AP Dhillon, and the sweet sounds of cricket at the World Cup [ESPNcricinfo]

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