International sports broadcaster ESPN has announced an all-time viewership record for its final year covering motor racing’s Formula 1 (F1) in the US, with the 2025 campaign securing an average audience of 1.3 million per race.
The average race audience for the 24-race season televised across the broadcaster’s ESPN and ESPN 2 linear channels, as well as free-to-air sister channel ABC, broke the previous record of 1.21 million that was set in 2022.
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Crucially, the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday (December 7), which saw McLaren’s Lando Norris win the driver's title in a tight three-way race alongside McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, averaged 1.5 million viewers on ESPN, peaking at 1.8 million.
Overall, 16 of the 24 races during the 2025 season set viewership records for ESPN, including Grands Prix in Australia, China, Monaco, Spain, Canada, Austria, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Azerbaijan, Austin (US), Mexico, Las Vegas (US), Qatar, and Abu Dhabi.
Five other races showed year-on-year viewership growth – Japan, Bahrain, Italy, Hungary, and Saudi Arabia – while Miami, Singapore, and Brazil were the only GPs not to show a YoY viewership increase.
The figures come as ESPN’s coverage of F1 in the US ends after eight years, having aired the series during its explosive growth in the country from 2018 to 2025, helped to a large degree by the F1: Drive to Survive show that has been airing on streaming content service Netflix since 2019.
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By GlobalDataThe average race viewership has been mixed throughout ESPN’s coverage, starting with 554,000 in 2018 and increasing to 672,000 in 2019. The 2020 season saw a dip in viewership to 608,000, largely due to the race calendar shortening during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it recovered the following year to reach 948,000.
The 2022 season drew 1.21 million average viewers per race, with the 2023 and 2024 seasons both recording 1.1 million per race before this season’s record 1.3 million.
Streaming giant Apple will now cover the next five F1 seasons exclusively in the US between 2026 and 2030, through a deal reportedly worth $700 million in total – the most significant sports rights acquisition to date.
ESPN’s latest contract covering the 2023 to 2025 season saw it paying $90 million annually for the rights.
Apple, meanwhile, is paying roughly $140 million each year, which comes in as a significant improvement financially for the series; however, it is yet to be seen if the change in broadcaster will affect viewership numbers.
The viewership announcement comes a day after Kayo Sports, the sports streaming platform of Australian pay-TV broadcaster Foxtel, also announced record viewership figures for the 2025 F1 season, highlighting the series’ growing popularity around the world.
Kayo said the 2025 season was the most-streamed campaign on the platform so far, with viewers streaming 898 million minutes across the season, representing a 26% increase year-on-year.
The platform said this year’s Spanish, Belgian, Miami (US), British, and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix drew the strongest audiences on Kayo.
Foxtel holds near-exclusive rights to F1 in Australia as part of a four-year deal covering the 2023 to 2026 seasons, with the broadcaster providing live coverage of every session of the season split across its Foxtel platforms and Kayo.
It shares rights to the Australian Grand Prix with a free-to-air provider under the country’s anti-siphoning laws, with Paramount-owned Network Ten currently holding those rights through the 2026 season.
The 2026 F1 season kicks off with the Australian GP on the weekend of March 6 to 8 next year.
