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The owner of Formula 1 is hoping a new film starring Hollywood star Brad Pitt will boost the sport’s Netflix-driven push into the American public mainstream, as it seeks to secure a more lucrative US broadcast deal.
Derek Chang, chief executive of Colorado-based Liberty Media, said the film, F1, will combine with “compelling” on-track competition to boost interest in the racing series. The film is part of a strategy to use show business to widen the sport’s appeal beyond its traditionally strong European market.
“Anytime Brad Pitt’s in a movie people pay attention,” Chang told the Financial Times ahead of this season’s first race in Australia on Sunday. “The movie is serving the super fan, but also driving this mainstream.”
The film, due for release in June, counts seven-times F1 champion Lewis Hamilton and Jerry Bruckheimer among its producers. It comes as F1 seeks to use its newfound popularity to improve on a current US broadcast deal that nets it roughly $85mn a year from Disney’s ESPN.
ESPN has held the US rights since 2018 but its window of exclusivity to renegotiate a new deal has elapsed, freeing Liberty to speak to other broadcasters. America accounts for a small proportion of F1’s global media rights revenue, which grew 7.9 per cent to about $1.18bn in 2024.
“We’ve had a great relationship with ESPN but there are other players out there,” Chang said. “Obviously, you’re always looking for economics but . . . to some degree, you’re [also] looking for who can help you continue to grow the sport.”
The next US deal could be worth $121mn, according to analysts at Citi, who added that Netflix, Amazon and Apple would be “the most likely bidders”.
Chang, a Liberty board member since 2021, said F1 was having conversations with “all the likely suspects”.
Getting closer to fans is vital in the competitive battle for audience attention, and higher broadcast revenue, for Chang, who replaced Greg Maffei as Liberty Media’s boss in February.
The company, which has owned F1 since an $8bn takeover in 2017, has transformed the sport by marketing it in new ways, helping it to win new fans with the 2019 release of the Netflix show Formula 1: Drive to Survive.
The series paved the way for F1 to expand in the US, adding races in Miami and Las Vegas in 2022 and 2023. The average number of viewers watching races on ESPN doubled to 1.1mn in 2024 compared with 2018, although that was flat compared with the previous year.
As well as partnerships with broadcasters such as Sky in the UK, F1 has invested heavily in content production, including a media facility at Biggin Hill in Greater London. It also owns F1 TV, a digital subscription service that streams live races in some countries.
However, F1’s growth in the US has faced challenges, with lower hospitality and ticket sales for the Las Vegas race last November contributing to an 8 per cent drop in fourth-quarter revenue to $1.1bn. Full-year revenue rose 6 per cent to $3.4bn and operating profit increased more than 25 per cent to $492mn.
Attendance at the second edition of the Las Vegas event dropped to 306,000 over the three days it was held, from 315,000 for the inaugural grand prix in 2023, which also benefited from an additional day for an opening ceremony.
F1 said this week it had refined the ticketing strategy to boost attendance for November’s race in Las Vegas and would offer lower-cost $50 single day admission tickets, while also cutting the costs of operating the race.
The event is the only one on the calendar that F1 promotes itself, exposing the company to financial risk if sales disappoint. In other races, third-party promoters pay a fee and take on responsibility for ticketing.
Chang said “this year will be better than last and next year will be better than this [year]”, adding that the company now has enough data to know “who the customers are [and] what the right ticket pricing is”.
