ESPN and Formula 1 have enjoyed a hugely successful partnership that, along with Netflix’s Drive to Survive, has catapulted the world’s most popular racing series to new heights in America. But now F1 is looking like moving on with an even richer deal on the horizon.
Earlier this month, it was reported that ESPN will not renew F1 rights when their contract comes up at the end of the 2025 season with Netflix and NBC mentioned as possible outlets that could pick up the next contract.
And that next contract could be a much more expensive one for whichever network or streaming company is looking to bring the racing series on board.
According to Sports Business Journal publisher Abraham Madkour, F1 could see their US television rights fee double from $85 million annually to the $160-180 million annually range.
Holmes will work the marketplace hard to share the F1 story, and not surprisingly, Liberty Media has very high expectations on this renewal. It is looking for an aggressive increase from the estimated $85 million a year that ESPN pays to a deal that would pay between $160 million and $180 million a year. What’s behind such a number? It’s very likely that any new Concorde Agreement implemented in 2026 will mean more revenue distributed to the teams. So, Liberty Media views this deal as one of the biggest economic levers F1 has to drive more revenue.
After ESPN chose to opt out of its $550 million yearly MLB deal, it’s not a surprise that they would also choose to make a value based decision with Formula One if the rights fee is going to potentially more than double. Although the partnership has been successful, ESPN airs the races commercial free and their average audience is just over a million viewers.
However, on the flip side, F1 gives ESPN a lot of valuable inventory for its range of networks, especially at early hours of the day when there aren’t a lot of other live sports options. Between races, practice, and qualifying, there are several hours of F1 programming each race week that would be part of the deal.
F1 has hit a bit of a plateau in the last year or two thanks to the continued dominance of Max Verstappen, so any perspective network might want to proceed with caution. An F1 deal would make sense for NBC as it looks to continue bolster its sports offerings on Peacock. As it would for Netflix, who is of course already the home of Drive to Survive and is beginning to add more regular live sports and entertainment.
But whoever has the winning bid for the next F1 US television contract looks like they will have to pay up.
