Is motorsport becoming overly commercialised?

Motorsport relies on sponsors and commercial opportunities to not only thrive, but survive. So why does it feel like that is now the priority, rather than the racing? And why is it happening?

Motorsport in its simplest form was established in 1894, with the Paris-Rouen event. It was a reliability test, with the race covering a distance of 50 miles, with the winner averaging 10.2mph. From here racing developed, with the first 24 hours of Le Mans taking place in 1923. A field of 20 manufacturers entered, with the one outlier, British-owned Bentley.

When Formula One formed as a championship in 1950, it attracted brands such as Ferrari and Maserati, who were at the forefront of this era with drivers such as Fangio, Ascari and Hill. But it also inspired pioneers such as Ken Tyrell and Frank Williams to establish their own teams in the 70s.

Also in the 1970s, a used car and motorcycle dealership owner was thrust in charge of Formula One. His name…Bernie Ecclestone.

Ecclestone earned a reputation towards the end of his ‘reign’ of making the sport elitist and inaccessible for struggling teams, as well as new ones. The likes of Honda, BMW and Renault crashed out of the sport before 2010, with new teams like HRT, Caterham and Virgin Racing not surviving more than a few seasons.

However, he did understand the untapped potential of Formula One and by the time he eventually handed over the sport to Liberty Media in 2017, he was known as the ‘grandfather’ of the sport. Some of his changes were warmly received as he improved safety standards alongside the FIA after the fatal crashes of Ratzenberger and Senna at Imola in 1994. He also established the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974 which was designed to increase the commercial organisation of Formual One for the benefit of teams (with Williams and Tyrell on the board) as well as Formula One Promotions and Administrations (FOPA) in 1987. Ecclestone created this to manage TV rights, with FOPA receiving 49% of TV revenues, 1% to the teams and 50% to the FIA.

Some of his actions came under much greater scrutiny, as he saw opportunity to expand into Asia and the Middle East with races debuting in China, India, Korea and Singapore. He also controversially convinced Vladimir Putin to host a race in Russia from 2014-2021, a contract which ended due to ongoing conflict with Ukraine. His morals were often questioned, but it can’t be denied that he changed the history and future of F1 forever.

He was also extremely keen on sponsorship. The first team sponsors were seen at the opening race of the 1968 season. Team Gunston was a privateer team which entered their Brabham car in the orange, brown and gold colours of Gunston Cigarettes. Before this, teams and drivers were identified by their national colours, for example, Italian cars were often red and British cars were green. Before 1968, F1 had strict rules on sponsorship, but after BP, Shell and Firestone withdrew their support, they had no choice but to relax their restrictions.

The first industry to jump at this opportunity was tobacco, with brands such as Imperial Tobacco and Philip Morris keen on sponsoring teams. The Philip Morris group formed a famous partnership with McLaren, which saw their product Marlboro become the primary sponsor on the car. The likes of Lauda, Prost and Senna won championships with Marlboro backing, as well as Schumacher when they moved to Ferrari in the late 90s. Sponsorships allowed the teams to develop more advanced cars and it meant they were able to hire the best drivers and team personnel. There was a period of time in the 70s and early 80s where sponsors were more concerned with safety than the FIA. This is because they didn’t want to see drivers dying in a car / overalls with their logo on as it may ‘ruin their image’.

Towards the end of the 90s / the early 2000s, there was a growing public awareness of the health risks associated with smoking, with governments unhappy with major sporting events being sponsored by these brands, which led to their slow removal from Formula One. However, Philip Morris remained involved with Ferrari up until 2022. In 2008, the Marlboro logo was replaced with a ‘mystery’ barcode, which was banned by the 2010 season as it was fooling nobody. As one final push, in 2018  ‘Mission Winnow’ appeared on the car, which is now regarded as a form of ‘stealth marketing’, as although the tobacco products weren’t directly advertised, it was drawing attention back to the brand.

By the time tobacco brands were retracting their sponsorship, F1 had a much bigger problem - Viewership.

Between 2009-2010, viewership nosedived from 600 million to 520 million, by 2013 this number was 450 million. Along with 2013, 2015 hit an all time low with an average of 3 million viewers per race in the UK. For a sport that was meant to be the ‘pinnacle of motorsport’, it was falling far short.

In January 2017, Liberty Media led by chairman John Malone, purchased Formula One for $4.4 billion, ending the reign of ‘F1 supremo’ Ecclestone. Liberty Media’s main aim was to push F1 forward in the digital market as they felt there was an opportunity for exponential growth.

In their first five years (2017-Jan 2022), Formula One’s online presence grew from 7.8 million to 49.1 million followers, a 44.5% annual growth. As of writing this article, their instagram alone has amassed over 32 million followers and their ‘X’ account (formerly Twitter) has over 10 million. The main reason for this, a little series called ‘Drive to Survive’.

Unless you have been living under a motorsport rock, you will have heard of the Netflix series ‘Drive to Survive’. Since 2018, Netflix has been pointing their cameras at the drivers and teams, giving us behind the scenes access, helping the audience to develop a greater understanding of the personalities in Formula One.

The series has its pros and cons.

We discovered how much of an F1 icon ex-Hass Team Principal Günther Steiner was, as well as drivers like Daniel Ricciardo who was able to let his personality shine. However, for the more diehard fan, at times it’s a tricky watch. The series is littered with inaccuracies that a casual fan wouldn’t notice, trying to make the series more dramatic, incase cars going over 200mph wasn’t already enough.

In the first 6 months of 2023 alone, the series received an average audience of 3.85 million viewers per episode and over 90.2 million hours viewed globally. 31% of these viewers were between the ages 18-29 and just over 46% of all viewers were female. The impact of the series is immense, as Formula One has roughly 1.55 billion fans worldwide, 1/3 of these coming in the last 4 years.

I think it’s great that Formula One is now reaching more corners of the globe than it ever has before and it means I’m able to talk about it with more people, rather than constantly boring my mum. But this constant need for expansion is causing some problems.

In 2014 if you wanted to buy a general admission ticket for 3 days of action at the British Grand Prix, it would cost you £90 per person. In 2025, the cheapest possible option for the exact same ticket is £329, with a grandstand ticket just for the Sunday costing you at least £319. The cheapest F1 race to now attend is the Hungarian GP, where a 3 day general admission ticket costs 225 euros (£189). Even in 2021, a 3 day General Admission ticket at Silverstone would cost £200. The meteoric rise in prices are meaning to attend an F1 race is becoming increasingly more exclusive and not catering for those who simply can’t afford to pay these prices. So how can they justify that? Well, they offer food (which is extortionate) and music each night, including acts like Stormzy. But the main reason the prices are so high, is because they can be. Why would they lower the prices when they are selling out each year with higher ticket prices?

The drive for constant commercial opportunities has also taken Formula One, quite controversially, to countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Saudi have invested an estimated $480 million to build the Jeddah street circuit, with their 10 year contract worth over $650 million. Qatar meanwhile pays $55 million per year to host a race in their country, which is also on a 10 year agreement. They’ve also extended their commitment to Formula One by purchasing a roughly 30% stake in the Audi F1 Team which will take to the grid in 2026. These numbers don’t even factor races which are sponsored by Qatar Airways or Aramco, who also title sponsor Aston Martin, paying $30 million a year. To sponsor a race can cost upwards of $60 milllion, and between them they were the title sponsor of 6 races in 2024.

It is, however, their actions towards women and LGBTQ+ communities which have been more of a concern. Lewis Hamilton raised this point in 2021, where at the Qatar and Saudi GP he wore a helmet with the pride flag, a trend which has continued in the following years. Only 22% of women are employed in Saudi Arabia and those who are, earn only 56% of what the men do. Saudi Arabia announced their project to host an F1 race in August 2019, just over a year after women were given the right to drive in the country. They seem to have more money than they know what to do with, as they have begun construction of the new F1 Qiddiya circuit, in a complex that doesn’t exist yet. The estimated cost of the project is an eye-watering $350 billion and it’s going to include the racetrack, golf courses, theme parks, a water park, 120 resorts, 160,000 homes. The track won’t be finished until 2028 at the earliest and is set to be the longest on the calendar.

I’m just not sure why F1 needs to be associated with theme parks and a water park. It certainly looks like another ‘money-grabbing’ opportunity, without necessarily considering the implications it has on the sport, environment and the fans. But maybe I’m wrong.

An obsession Formula One has developed in recent years is the need to ‘crack’ America, and it actually makes sense.

The United States is only 100,000 miles smaller than Europe in area, but up until 2022 only hosted one race (Texas), compared to the ten in Europe. In 2022, the Miami GP was introduced to the calendar, with the circuit winding round the famous Miami Dolphins stadium, but most notably, Las Vegas was added to the calendar in 2023. The thought of seeing drivers travelling at speeds of 200+ mph was turning heads, until they turned too far and saw the ticket prices. A grandstand ticket for 3 days would set you back between $1800-$2750 (£1450 - £2215), with a general admission ticket costing upwards of $600 (£483) for 3 days. I think more than the extortionate prices; the larger issue is that the essence of Formula One is lost at these events.

The organisers and promoters care more about the show off the track. Their aim is to attract the biggest celebrities and make the drivers take part in introductions before the race which makes them look like they’re about to join the Avengers. It feels like racing is an insignificant part of the ‘show’, when it should be the main event that the whole of Las Vegas stops for.

The fact is, Formula One will never be the same. You’ll never have a pioneer like Ken Tyrell or Frank Williams who will be able to take the leap creating a team, because it’s simply not possible now. A quiet weekend where racing is the sole focus, where the drivers are treated like heroes, not like media personalities, will never happen again. Which in my opinion, is a massive shame.

The ‘Drive to Survive effect’ can’t be ignored, especially in America. In 2018, 263,000 fans attended the Texas Grand Prix at COTA, whereas in 2022, the event was sold out with over 440,0000 fans attending across the whole weekend. A similar pattern is noticeable in the people watching the race at home.

NASCAR is heralded as the most popular motorsport in America, and rightly so. Before Drive to Survive, an F1 race was watched by 500,000 people on average, an eighth of the NASCAR average. Now in 2024, F1 averages 1.1 million viewers per race on ESPN, yet it is still nearly 2 million viewers behind NASCAR, which averaged 2.9 million per race on NBC. Not only this, F1’s popularity in America has been falling 3% a year since 2022, cementing NASCAR’s win in the popularity contest.

Ironically, NASCAR has the opposite problem to Formula One. They cannot capture an audience outside of America. The total cost of the NASCAR TV rights for 2025 globally was $832.2 million. $826.3 million of that is from America and Canada, 99.3% of the cost. Even with this investment, they’re not currently flourishing in America. In 2015, the average viewership per race was 5.1 million, but in 2024 this dropped to 2.87 million. As well as this, they are also suffering from an ageing age demographic, with 34% of their viewers aged between 55-64, with only 5% of viewers between 18-24 across America, Canada and Mexico.

IndyCar’s numbers are suffering even more. Although the Indy500 saw an increase in viewers in 2024 with 5.34 million, they only averaged 800,000 viewers across the whole season. The 2022 Toronto Street race was a low point for IndyCar coverage, with the race receiving just over 50,000 viewers on NBC, which for the ‘closest racing on earth’, is unacceptable. That’s why, in 2024, it was announced that FOX had purchased the broadcasting rights for IndyCar from 2025, in a $25 million deal. Their aim is to commercialise IndyCar to a much wider audience, and if their teaser trailers featuring Josef Newgarden and Alex Palou in the pre-season are anything to judge their coverage by, IndyCar are headed in the right direction.

In recent years, both NASCAR and IndyCar have attempted their own versions of Drive to Survive. NASCAR first season of ‘Full Speed’ premiered on Netflix last year with season 2 coming out in early 2025. I was a newcomer to the sport in 2024 and the series was brilliant to help build an understanding of the personalities and drama in the NASCAR series, so I’m interested to see watching season 2 whether it is ‘littered’ with issues like DTS or not. IndyCar also premiered a series called ‘100 days to Indy’ which debuted on NBC. The first two seasons are now shown on American Netflix, with the aim of the series to also build excitement and an understanding of the drivers and the championship in the build-up to the Indy500 at the end of May.

There’s no guarantee that this will help to increase viewership across a whole season, and maybe it’s too soon to tell, but the effort to try and replicate the impact Drive to Survive had on F1 is clear to see.

Overall, I think there needs to be a better balance of commercialisation within motorsport. From Tobacco sponsorships in the 70s, to Drive to Survive in the modern day, both undeniably helped to push the sport forward. But when is it too much? Is F1 selling its integrity and its history in pursuit of more money? Races in Saudi Arabia and Qatar would suggest this. The money they’re investing in the sport means historic and amazing tracks like Spa-Francorchamps are being made biennial due to their budget. Then on top of this, why is F1 so keen on events like Las Vegas? An event where the race feels like an after thought doesn’t massively appeal to me.

I’m not sure. Maybe I’m missing something, but I feel the needle has swung too far in the direction of money and ‘showbiz’ rather than the real, raw racing of the past. The irony is that NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula E would dream of an ounce of the attention Formula One is receiving globally. But I don’t think any series has the right balance or solution yet. Whether they will or not in the near future is unknown, but F1 right now, for me, is losing itself in the pursuit of commercialisation and the opportunities that it brings.