According to several reports which appeared in the industry press yesterday evening, Disney’s ESPN network has reached a new deal in order to continue continue holding the United States media rights to broadcast Formula 1 until the 2025 championshop. The information was also confirmed by the Sports Business Journal website, which states that ESPN had secured the rights through to 2025 in a new contract that is said to be worth between $75m and $90m per season.
That would mean an impressive huge 1500% rise on the the $5m value of the current deal and is caused by the recent huge increase of interest in the sport in the United States, particularly following the intense and controversial end of the 2021 Formula 1 season.
The first editon of the Miami Grand Prix, which took place this season, saw attracted 2.6 million viewers in May, believed to be an all-time record for a TV audience for Formula 1 in the United States. Viewership of races on ESPN during the 2021 F1 campaign jumped 56% year-on-year, and in-person spectator attendance at to the United States Grand prix at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin also significantly increased.
A few weeks ago it was reported that Netflix was working on winning the rights to make the most of its existing relationship with Formula 1, given the fact that The Drive to Survive behind the scenes documentary is seen as one of the main factors which led to the new popularity of the sport in the United States.
It is believes that Netflix was willing to pay a lot more than ESPN to receive the TV broadcasting rights for the following seasons but it seems that the Formula 1 management eventually chose to remain with the network and the House of Mouse which also includes ABC, ESPN2 and streaming service ESPN+.
Until now, Netflix has not shown a lot of interest in focusing on live sporting rights, as opposed to its rival Amazon Prime, that has been acquiring key tennis and soccer rights around the world. Amazon also reportedly wanted to make a bid for the Formula 1 TV broadcasting rights, just like the NBC Universal broadcast group.
Sports Business Journal and online news site website Deadline Hollywood informed that they had contacted representatives for both ESPN and Formula 1 to talks about the reports, but that no official comment had been made by any of the parties.
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Italian manager and the current CEO of Formula One Group Stefano Domenicali was interviewed by Deadline a few weeks ago and confirmed that he and his team were “exploring all of the opportunities” and “not in a rush to make the decision” about the United States rights.
Liberty CEO Greg Maffei previously said that up to now the company had opted to take “broader coverage over the money” when the contract with ESPN was last renewed in 2019, adding: “I think that’s paid off.”
Ahead of the 2022 discussions and negotiations, he explained: “I don’t think, as you know, it’s a complete trade-off. There will be degrees of access, degrees of coverage, and there’ll be degrees of money.”
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