Formula 1’s UK audience figures rose to their highest level in around four to five years as the titanic battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton came to a climax, however, audience figures dipped worldwide, analysis from Motorsport Broadcasting shows.
The consolidated UK data, released by BARB, includes viewers who watched the Grand Prix within seven days of the original transmission across TV, PC, smartphone, and tablet (defined by BARB as ‘four-screen viewing data’), the body no longer splitting these out into separate components.
A small number of historical data points are missing; however, these are not statistically significant enough to impact the overall trajectory.
In addition, this analysis excludes the Russian Grand Prix, as Sky’s figures for that weekend are unavailable, but does include the shortened Belgian Grand Prix.
Sky’s figures rise to highest ever level…
On race day, Sky split their programming into three or four blocks, depending on weekend.
Their build-up normally lasts 85 minutes, with the race segment lasting 135 minutes. The ‘Chequered Flag’ programme follows the podium for 60 minutes, whilst Ted’s Notebook sometimes wraps up proceedings.
Across a mix of Sky Sports F1, Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Showcase, an average audience of 1.59 million viewers watched the 22 races live on Sky during 2021, their highest ever audience for Formula 1.
Year-on-year, Sky’s figures increased by 25.7% from 1.27 million viewers in 2020, the fourth consecutive year that Sky’s F1 audience has increased.
For the first time, over 2 million viewers watched an F1 race live via one of Sky’s television channels. The season started well in Bahrain, with an average of 1.94 million viewers watching the race, peaking above the 2 million mark.
Later in the year, 2.11 million viewers watched a dramatic Saudi Arabian Grand Prix unfold, with 2.30 million opting to stay with Sky for the season decider in Abu Dhabi. The latter figure excludes those who decided to watch Sky’s broadcast on Channel 4.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Dutch Grand Prix was Sky’s lowest rated of 2021, averaging just 1.12 million viewers.
Competition from other channels was easier than usual, with no Premier League football, however the race followed the farcical Belgian Grand Prix one week earlier, which may have invertedly caused a dip.
Sky’s wrap around programming felt the benefit of the championship battle, with their pre-race build-up increasing by 13.9% year-on-year, while their post-race analysis increased by 31.1%, both double their 2018 averages.
Unsurprisingly, both Britain and Italy saw larger post-race audiences, thanks to Hamilton and Verstappen’s on-track incidents, with 407,000 viewers sticking around for the Silverstone post-race analysis and 448,000 viewers sticking around for the Monza debrief.
The new F1 Sprint format also performed well, with an average of 739,000 viewers watching Hamilton charge through the field in Brazil, the figure including Sky’s extensive wrap-around programming.
Sky gained an extra competitive session because of the change, with the displaced Friday qualifying session performing strongly. Both the Italian and Brazilian qualifying programmes averaged 470,000 viewers, comfortably above Sky’s usual practice average.
…as Channel 4’s audience continues to drop…
While Sky benefited from the intense championship battle, Channel 4 saw no obvious benefit, outside of the Abu Dhabi decider.
Highlights of 20 races on the free-to-air broadcaster (excluding Silverstone and Abu Dhabi) averaged 1.50 million viewers, down 14.4% of the 2020 average of 1.75 million viewers.
Including Silverstone and Abu Dhabi, the 23 races on Channel 4 averaged 1.63 million viewers, down on the equivalent 2020 figure of 1.80 million viewers. An average of 3.36 million viewers watched the season decider live on Channel 4.
The return of USA and Mexico to the F1 calendar hurt Channel 4’s average, both bringing in less than a million viewers after 7 days of consolidation, in part thanks to their late night time slot on Sunday.
Channel 4’s weak average was compounded by the fact that five of the European based races (France, Styria, Belgium, Netherlands and Turkey) averaged under 1.50 million viewers compared with one race (Abu Dhabi) in 2020.
Nevertheless, there were some positive numbers in amongst the overall decline for Channel 4, with the Emilia Romagna, Hungarian and Italian rounds drawing in close to 2 million viewers for their 150-minute highlights packages.
An average of 1.97 million viewers watched as Hamilton and Verstappen collided for the second time in 2021 at Monza, a slight increase on an equally dramatic 2020 Italian Grand Prix, which brought in 1.88 million viewers.
…but the overall UK picture is positive…
Unsurprisingly, Hamilton versus Verstappen drew in the viewers in 2021.
3.22 million viewers watched across Sky Sports and Channel 4, an increase of 5.1% on 2020 average audience of 3.06 million viewers, bringing audience figures back to a level last seen in 2016 and 2017.
However, the 2021 average dropped slightly at end of season compared with the mid-season figure of 3.24 million viewers.
As referenced both the USA and Mexican rounds performed poorly on Channel 4, with Sky’s live audience failing to offset the Channel 4 drop. The lack of increase may also suggest audience fatigue crept in as the season progressed.
For example, the Qatar Grand Prix averaged 3.15 million viewers, 1,000 viewers fewer than the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, despite the championship battle having stepped up considerably by that point.
The season finale in Abu Dhabi was the most watched race of 2021, with 5.66 million viewers watching live across Channel 4 and Sky Sports, this figure including some of the pre-race build-up and post-race wrap-around.
Overnight data showed that a peak of 7.4 million viewers watched as Verstappen overtook Hamilton to win the F1 title.
Saudi Arabia, Britain and the season opener in Bahrain also drew strong audiences. The inaugural race in Saudi averaged 3.88 million viewers, F1’s highest average at that time since the 2018 US Grand Prix.
Channel 4’s and Sky’s F1 audiences continued to converge, with a 49:51 split between the two broadcasters.
Assuming Sky’s audience figures remain strong this season, it is increasingly likely that they will become the dominant F1 broadcaster, from an audience share perspective, in the UK moving forward.
…as F1 faces a worldwide audience dip
While Formula 1’s audience increased in the UK thanks to the championship battle between Hamilton and Verstappen, worldwide the sports average audience dropped significantly.
An average of 70.3 million viewers watched each race, a decrease of 20% on 2020’s average of 87.4 million viewers, and down on the 2019 figure of 91 million viewers.
F1 says that the decrease is due to a change in broadcast rights in Germany and Brazil. For markets where broadcast rights have remained identical, audience figures increased by 13% to 60.3 million viewers, which F1 says is the best figure since 2013.
Taking the figures at face value, this implies that where broadcast rights changed hands between 2020 and 2021, F1’s average audience dropped by 24.1 million viewers, from 34 million viewers in 2020 to 9.9 million viewers in 2021.
| Season | Cumulative Audience | % y-o-y | Average Audience | % y-o-y | Races Held |
| 2018 | 1.76 billion | n/a | 83.7 million | n/a | 21 |
| 2019 | 1.92 billion | 9% | 91.5 million | 9% | 21 |
| 2020 | 1.49 billion | -23% | 87.4 million | -5% | 17 |
| 2021 | 1.55 billion | 4% | 70.5 million | -19% | 22 |
The drop is significant for F1, but unsurprising in some ways. F1 themselves highlighted in their 2019 data release that Brazil and Germany were two of their top markets, a statistic that will have since changed two years later.
While not impacting the whole of 2021, it is likely that the closure of Fox Sports in Asia also dented F1’s average across the season. F1 needed to find new homes in territories such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia after Fox closed its doors in early Autumn.
The fact that F1’s figures have increased for territories where the TV rights have stayed the same is good, but it fails to account for the overall worldwide drop that F1 has experienced. Like Formula 1, Formula E also used their cumulative audience data to hide a race-by-race drop.
Over on F1’s digital platforms, analysis by this site shows that the amount of people watching F1’s race highlights packages on YouTube has increased by 41% year-on-year, from an average of 5.24 million viewers in 2020 to 7.38 million viewers in 2021.
Both the cumulative TV audience and unique audience increased by 4% and 3% respectively year-on-year to 1.55 billion viewers and 445 million viewers, reflecting the longer calendar compared with 2020.
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I’m not surprised about the UK figures. Questions will no doubt have to be asked come 2023 about whether it’s worth keeping the British Grand Prix on the protected list, given the free to air figures are just so poor year on year now. Will Liberty Media want to risk going with a free to air broadcaster at all for the next UK contract, or stick with what appears to be a safe pair of hands? If the latter, it makes sense for Sky to take over full coverage and show one (or possibly more) races on their free to air channels.
Thanks posting this very interesting data. Could the increase in Sky viewership account for some of decrease in Channel 4’s viewers?
Hopefully no more races added to fixture list, enough now, if not a couple too many. For Sky fans particularly, watching all supporting programs, it felt slightly too much last season. Quality not quantity needed, please.
I have to say that since the season expanded above 20 races i have started to lose interest a bit over the final few rounds even if the title fight is close.
It’s just starting to feel like a few too many, Especially factoring in the number of double/triple headers & that sessions now start an hour or more later meaning it feels like its taking up more of the day/weekend.
I’ve not skipped watching an F1 race since the 80s but with 23 this year plus ghe 3 sprints i will skip races this year as i just don’t want to dedicate so much time to it even though i don’t really want to miss any of the action.
And Sky’s price rises are becoming an issue also. There viewers may be rising but its getting hard to justify the cost.
Liberty media are greedy. That’s the whole issue here. They have increased the calendar to record levels and are still trying to increase it even further. They are trying to remove some of if not most of the legacy races like Monaco, spa and possibly silverstone. All while increasing the number of USA races because there has been a rise in interest there due to Netflix. However the issue I see with this is that, as soon as Netflix decide to stop drive to survive, interest of F1 in the USA will drop again. Then where will F1 be? My opinion, they’ll be up a certain creek with a paddle. Loosing Monaco, spa and silverstone will seriously annoy long term fans (myself included) to the point of dissolution. I agree that new races are exciting and a draw for new fans. However the younger, Netflix generation are a fickle bunch and will stop watching just as quickly as they started watching. As far as sky in the uk goes, there programs are good, the production is up there with the best sports broadcasts, however some of the presenters, pundits, commentators etc are obviously biased towards Lewis Hamilton and most of the time talk complete waffle. Crofty, Damon Hill, Ted Kravitz, are the worst culprits. They should also try to attract more relevant pundits or get Jenson Button tied down to more races, let’s face it, Hill and Herbert are not relevant nowadays, have no idea what it’s like to drive the latest or even relatively modern f1 cars and can barely get a sentence out without at least a few um’s and eh’s. There are plenty ex drivers out there that would be far better suited to the job.