All Formula 1 teams not named Red Bull may be winless in 2023 to date, but ABC/ESPN continued to enjoy a variety of firsts in U.S. TV audience for the sport during the first half of the season.
ESPN reports that last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix featured the largest U.S. television audience average on record for the event at 1.17 million viewers, up 12 percent over 2022. It also featured 492,000 average viewers in the 18-49 age bracket, making it Sunday’s most-viewed program in that demo on ESPN platforms.
Saturday’s sprint on ESPN2 also drew strongly with 555,000 viewers, while 405K watched Friday’s qualifying session on ESPN2.
Through the opening 12 races, the 2023 F1 season is averaging 1.24 million viewers per race across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. That average is slightly higher than the overall season average for 2022 of 1.21m, which was the highest ever for F1 in the United States.
The 2023 season has had three of F1’s four largest live audiences in history on U.S. television — the inaugural Miami GP in 2022 remains the largest at 2.6 million but this year’s races at Miami (1.96m), Monaco (1.79m) and Canada (1.76m) are now the second, third and fourth spots on the all-time list for live telecast audiences.
All but two of the races this year have averaged more than 1 million viewers. The outliers are Australia, which aired in the overnight hours and averaged 556K, and Azerbaijan, at 959K.
