Apple has clinched U.S. rights to Formula 1, adding its live races to flagship streaming service Apple TV in the wake of Brad Pitt movie blockbuster F1: The Movie.
The 5-year agreement starts next year. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Apple has been in the lead to secure the rights for several months.
Derek Chang, CEO of F1 parent Liberty Media, said at a Wall Street conference last month that rights talks were “pretty far along” with one partner, though he stopped short of naming Apple. The tech giant offered between $120 million and $150 million per year, far more than incumbent ESPN’s top bid of $90 million, according to a report last summer by The Athletic.
In a press briefing before Friday’s announcement, Apple SVP of Services Eddy Cue and F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said they first connected during the latter’s executive tenure at Ferrari, long before he got the top job at F1 in 2021. In recent years, as the feature film project gained traction, the two execs and their teams grew closer as they collaborated on the movie. F1 provided access to its venues, personnel and cars, giving the film a verisimilitude matched by few sports films.
“Trust is essential in these relationships,” Domenicali said, extolling Apple as “a social movement,” not merely a tech company. Cue half-joked that he started thinking about getting the rights “when I was 10 years old” and discovering his passion for the racing body, which was then absent from the U.S. media landscape.
Propelled by a greater presence for the racing circuit in the U.S., with stops now in Las Vegas, Austin and Miami, ratings for F1 on ESPN have been strong. Last summer’s British Grand Prix notched a 19% gain over the 2024 edition, averaging 1.5 million viewers. While that audience is far from the top echelon of live sports, it skews toward younger people with disposable income, which suits Apple’s larger purposes of weaving video streaming into its larger business objectives.
The streaming-only deal is the latest such move in the sports world, which has seen mainstays like the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball all expand beyond linear TV and into streaming. Sports fans without access to Prime Video, Netflix and Peacock are finding it increasingly tough to get their regular fix, though free, ad-supported streamers are now more in the mix, with YouTube and Tubi streaming live NFL games this season and Roku now on board with MLB. Leagues are branching out as a way of countering the declines in traditional pay-TV subscribers.
Cue said Apple would replicate its strategy for promotion for F1 last summer, whose release by Warner Bros. netted $629 million in global box office, an all-time record for Pitt and for the sports movie category. The movie is coming to Apple TV (which recently dropped the “plus” from its name) on December 12. Apple’s News, Music, Fitness+ and Sports platforms will be activated in order to drive awareness and viewership. “We have so many touchpoints that we can use for this,” Cue said.
In focus group testing for F1, Cue recalled, audience members in the U.S. would be asked whether they had ever watched F1. A small number of hands would go up. Coming out of the film, they were asked if they planned to watch an F1 race, and “lots of hands would go up,” Cue recalled.
Cue said the timing of the rights deal and a major new bundle with Peacock was accidental. Asked why F1 would be included in the main Apple TV service at no extra charge, unlike Major League Soccer, which created a stand-alone subscription service in a joint venture with Apple, Cue said it came down to having a more straightforward lineup with F1. MLS has teams across the country and more inventory than the weekly tempo of F1, which centers on races and qualifying rounds.
Details of the broadcasts, including on-air talent and product features, are still being finalized, the companies said. Cue said he expected to release some viewership data along the way, which has not typically been Apple’s way. Along with MLS, the company has streamed Major League Baseball games since 2022.
F1 TV Premium, the racing group’s existing streaming service, will continue to be available in the U.S. via an Apple TV subscription only, but it will be free for those who sign up that way.
“We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with Formula 1 and offer Apple TV subscribers in the U.S. front-row access to one of the most exciting and fastest-growing sports on the planet,” Cue said in the official announcement. Next year will be “transformative” for F1, he added, with new teams, regulations and cars entering the scene.
Domenicali said the team-up would “ensure we can continue to maximize our growth potential in the U.S. with the right content and innovative distribution channels.”
