- March 21, 2023

Formula One is fuelling up the U.S. market

Maite Azkuna
Maite Azkuna
Senior Analyst, Marketing Content & Insights
Comscore
Fifteen million Americans visited digital content related to auto racing sports in January 2023.1 Formula One, which just started its 74th World Championship season, has not achieved the same level of notoriety in the United States as it has in other countries. However, there are signs that things are changing: interest has steadily increased in recent years, and we see this reflected in the traffic to the Formula1.com website (see chart below).

F1 Audiences

Interest in Formula One (hereafter F1) is also reflected on social media: social posts related to it generated millions of engagements even before this year’s championship, which began on March 5, 2023; and in the first week of the championship, U.S. brands that talk about F1 on social media have achieved a total of 6.4 million engagements.

Social Media Engagement

A breakdown of media and entertainment brands that generated most engagements on social media is provided in the table below and may provide some additional clues to Formula 1’s recent increase in popularity.

Top Brands

Observe that both Netflix and Drive to Survive rank among the top 3 entertainment brands – Drive to Survive is a documentary series hosted on Netflix that shows what goes on behind the scenes of the Formula One World Championship.

Drivetosurvive

Typically, Drive to Survive is released a year after the Formula One championship that it covers; its fifth season, was released in February 2023 and interest is not showing any signs of slowing down – quite the contrary in fact: as the chart below shows, engagement with Drive to Survive on social media has increased with each season.

Engagement with Social Media

Fundamentally, this is another case study of how brands can successfully expand their footprint within a target market: a compelling story, and partnerships with media companies that can provide a stage to the story. By opening itself up and becoming a little more accessible, Formula One may reach the finish line of becoming a mainstream sport in the U.S.

To find out more about how audiences engage with brands or consume media, contact your Comscore representative or visit comscore.com/learnmore

Definitions

*Number of actions (i.e., reactions, shares, comments, retweets, favorites, loves) is calculated across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. 

Sources

1. Plan Metrix Multi-platform, Total Audience 18+, IAB Digital Interests 2.0: Sports “Auto Racing”, January 2023, U.S