By Alex Charkham

We need a ‘Drive to Survive,’” said many a rights holder at some point in the last five years.“You should do a behind-the-scenes documentary,” said pretty much every sport sponsorship agency at some point in the last five years in response to a client brief.

Many sports industry professionals have drunk the sports documentary Kool-Aid, deeming it a panacea to any number of marketing ills. Make *insert sport here* famous among a peripheral audience and the growth will look after itself.

But as marketing commentator Bob Hoffman regularly reminds us, “There is nothing about marketing that is black and white, true or false. All we have are likelihoods and probabilities. Fame is no guarantee of brand success, but it’s the most reliable driver.”

For every success story, such as “Drive to Survive” (DtS), there have been (and will continue to be) failures, such as “Break Point.” The latter was scrapped by Netflix largely due to the underwhelming narratives of tennis tour professionals relative to the depth of A, B and C storylines that are endemic to F1. Data released by Netflix shows that “Break Point” amassed a “mere” 30.5 million viewing hours in the first half of 2023 compared to 90.2 million by DtS season 5 — 121st on a list of over 18,000 titles.

It’s encouraging to see rights holders “up” their marketing ante. However, the approach involves outsourcing their most valuable assets — namely their IP and audiences — to partners in exchange for a quick buck. It seems illogical that rights holders should let someone else tell their story, but the reality is that they are not set up to execute such marketing endeavours. As a result, many of these partners, Netflix included, are successfully building businesses from this relatively “cheap” way of working.

“Drive to Survive” is perhaps the strongest manifestation of this challenge. The hope was to bring new audiences to F1 which, in turn, would drive commercial value. However, it could be argued that outsourcing these efforts to Netflix has had an unintended effect.

Instead, DtS has mostly succeeded in building a secondary audience, one that has limited interest in the main event. As a result, much of this audience sits outside of F1’s commercial ecosystem which, in theory at least, hinders F1’s ability to commercialise this newfound fandom.

 

IF THEY AREN’T WATCHING, DO THEY COUNT?

 

In 2023, F1 saw increased revenue, operating profit, attendances, and team valuations. It also saw a decrease in the average age and male skew of the fan base — much of this attributed to the ubiquitous “Drive to Survive Effect.”

However, if DtS has really fed the F1 funnel, it’s reasonable to assume that audience growth would be directly affected.

F1’s social media channels have certainly benefited. Social analytics tool Tagger suggests that Instagram alone has seen a 440% follower growth since Series 1 in 2019 (from 6.1 million to 26.7 million). According to F1, their social channels ranked second among all major sports leagues for follower growth rate in Q2 2023 — bettered only by Spanish football division La Liga.

Similarly, 6.15 million attended races in 2023, up from 4.16 million in 2019 (albeit the number of races has increased).

While these numbers may seem significant, they are dwarfed by TV audiences that average 70 million per race. Cumulative global TV viewership, however, has somewhat stagnated in the last 6 years, peaking at 1.92 billion in 2019 and clocking in at 1.55 billion in 2023. And despite the Las Vegas factor, TV audiences in America fell 10% during 2023 to an average of just 1.11 million — a small figure that belies supposed U.S. growth narrative.

Matters are not helped by the absolute dominance of Red Bull and much of F1’s broadcast ecosystem sitting behind a paywall, but from a commercial standpoint, a rights holder’s viability is largely determined by the size of its TV audience. And while F1 still presents a unique proposition — it’s an annual global sports platform that runs the best part of 10 months per year — and commands a strong audience, it’s difficult to validate a DtS related growth story unless there is tangible evidence that new audiences are tuning in to watch the main event.

 

WHERE HAVE ALL THE DtS FANS GONE?

 

It now seems that F1 has two main audiences — one whose primary motivation is racing and another whose main interest resides in everything but the racing.

This audience, younger and more female, inhabits a world of (scripted) off-track drama, subplots and personalities of F1’s main protagonists — spearheaded by Netflix and amplified by social media. For this audience, racing is a means to an end, a single plot line within a much bigger narrative.

To put it another way, Christian Horner’s early-season antics have already set up the opening episode of DtS Season 7 a year in advance. Unfortunately for F1, this will likely prove more compelling than yet another Red Bull 1-2 finish.

 

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE NARRATIVE

 

Sport’s business model is primarily B2B. It has profited from selling off its primary assets to broadcasters, sponsors and content platforms alike. In doing so, however, many rights holders have inadvertently relinquished control of their IP and audiences to third parties.

In the case of DtS (and others), a new subaudience has been created that exists in isolation from the rights holder’s commercial ecosystem. And while you could argue that sponsors receive a degree of “added value” due to the exposure generated via DtS, the real winners are Netflix and, in all probability, the social media platforms. It would not be a surprise to see Netflix monetise DtS through advertising and product placement given its need for new revenue streams.

While DtS has been a resounding success as a content play, its commercial impact on F1 has been overhyped. Despite this, F1 have played a blinder — capitalising on the bull market narrative generated by the supposed “DtS effect” to create tangible value out of something largely intangible. The real proof will come during the next broadcast cycle — given the depleting audiences, uncompetitive racing and challenging economic climate, it may be challenging to justify higher rights values.

For other rights holders, it’s important to be aware of the potential consequences of documentary-led endeavours and ensure the commercial model can capitalise accordingly.