The 2025 Formula 1 season drew record viewing figures for the United States as ESPN concluded its eight-year run as the sport’s American broadcaster.
The season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – a title decider between Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri – averaged 1.5 million viewers on ESPN, peaking at 1.8 million, based on Nielsen Big Data + Panel data. That marked the 16th event viewership record of the 24 races in 2025, while 21 of the 24 saw year-on-year increases – only Miami, Singapore and Brazil recorded no increase.
The season-long average of 1.3 meters per race is a new record for F1 in the US. It surpasses the previous mark of 1.21 meters from the 2022 season and marks a 135% increase over ESPN’s first season of its last stint.
This was the final season of ESPN’s eight-year run as the broadcaster of F1 in the US, and the sport experienced significant viewership growth during that time. The first season on the network that first broadcast F1 – the first race broadcast in America was on ABC in 1962, while ESPN also owned the rights from 1984 to 1997 – drew an average of 554,000 per race in 2018, rising to 672,000 the following year.
The COVID-affected 2020 season saw an average of 608,000 people attend each race, before a big jump to 948,000 in 2021 for the season-long championship battle between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
ESPN has averaged more than a million per race since then, averaging 1.1 million over the past two years after offering commercial-free coverage since the second race of its run.
Liberty Media took over F1 in early 2017 and committed to a greater focus on the American market, which now has three races in Miami, Austin and Las Vegas. ESPN acquired the rights previously held by NBC the year after Liberty’s acquisition, and its 2025 ratings mark a 142% increase over the final year of the NBC deal.
As ESPN tries to retain the rights, F1 broadcasts will make way for streaming on Apple TV next year, with Apple’s senior vice president of services Eddy Cue recently saying the platform has “significantly more” than its previously estimated 45 million subscribers.
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