One of the biggest trends to come out of lockdowns is sports moving to stream via app, and almost every sport has been affected by this. I say almost because I'm not on top of bowling much these days.
Formula 1 racing is one sport that has not only been affected but has also risen to the occasion, focusing on streaming to a crowd stuck at home.
Aside from the main benefit of being able to give fans what they wanted without breaking lockdowns, investing in streaming helped F1 racing grow in an unexpected way - to the US (where the money is)!
England-based F1 and its cool cars weren't very popular in the US pre-covid. The F1 Group, which owns the sport, tried to bring it into the US a few times since things kicked off in the 50s but without much success. Maybe it was too complicated, or maybe NASCAR and Indy were enough. It's hard to tell.
But the combination of a perfectly timed Netflix documentary called Drive to Survive, F1's streaming, and way too much free time, led to growing popularity in the US.
That popularity eventually brough the F1 Grand Prix to Miami and later Las Vegas, making it official - the US embraces F1.
That wasn't all, though. Let's talk about revenue.
Looking all the way back to the app's release in 2018, our App Intelligence is showing quarterly net revenue of $45K in Q3. In a year, revenue rose by nearly 10x to kick off 2020 with $418K in Q1.
No, this isn't a lot yet, but hang tight!
As F1 was catching on and the streams improving, revenue continued to rise giving F1 TV nearly a million dollars of net revenue in Q1 of 2021. Things sped up from there to $3M in Q1 of 2022 and a whopping $10M in Q1 of 2023.
Guess where a majority of that revenue is from? The US!
Q1 of 2024 saw F1's highest revenue - $14M, according to our estimates. And that's net revenue which means what the group gets to keep after store fees. Although revenue came in from nearly 100 countries, the US led the way with a 35% share.
I see this trend continuing its growth in the future - both F1 becoming more popular in the US and sports streaming becoming the way to consume sports.
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