ESPN’s eight-year run with Formula 1 ended in characteristic fashion, with yet more viewership milestones.
Last Sunday’s season-ending Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix averaged a 0.8 rating and 1.53 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest audience on record for the race, surpassing the previous high of 1.0 million set last year. While Nielsen has changed its methodology in just the past year — expanding its out-of-home viewing sample to 100 percent of markets and adding “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes to its traditional panel — that would not explain a 53 percent increase.
Max Verstappen’s win, in which Lando Norris clinched the season title, was the final Formula 1 race on the ESPN networks. Starting next season, F1 will move to Apple TV in a five-year media rights deal.
Abu Dhabi was the 16th of 24 races this season to hit a new viewership high and the 21st to post a year-over-year increase, though the aforementioned methodological changes no doubt provide some caveats. Among the three races that did not increase was the most-watched of the season, the Miami Grand Prix (2.17M) — which lacked the NBA playoff lead-in that boosted last year’s race to an all-time F1 viewership high.
The full 2025 F1 season averaged 1.32 million viewers on the ESPN networks, up 20% from last year (1.10M) and the most-watched F1 season on U.S. television. The previous high was 1.21 million in 2022, though that was in an era with no “Big Data” and less out-of-home viewing — making it entirely likely that it would still rank higher all things being equal.
The last five F1 seasons — dating back to 2021 — rank as the five most-watched on record, each surpassing the longtime high water mark of 748,000 set in 1995. As 1995 was part of ESPN’s initial run airing F1 races, ESPN has now aired the six most-watched F1 seasons of the past 30 years (at least).
When ESPN began its current F1 run in 2018, the first season averaged just 554,000 viewers — and that was an improvement over the average on NBC Sports the prior year (538K).
Formula 1 Viewership Trend, 2012-Present
Compared to other motorsports series, F1 viewership was only slightly behind the IndyCar Series, which averaged 1.36 million. Keep in mind IndyCar aired exclusively on broadcast television in the first year of its new rights deal with FOX.
As one would expect, viewership was further behind the NASCAR Cup Series, which averaged 2.48 million across its mix of broadcast (FOX and NBC), cable (FS1, TNT and USA) and streaming (Amazon Prime Video). F1 did comfortably surpass the NASCAR Xfinity Series, which like IndyCar aired exclusively on broadcast TV, averaging 1.05 million on CW.
Average Viewership For Motorsports Series in 2025
The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix figures to be the last F1 race for some time to have a publicly accessible viewership estimate. Apple has not subscribed to Nielsen measurement for its sports properties, with dribs and drabs of viewership coming out at the discretion of league executives like MLS commissioner Don Garber.
But at least going into the Apple partnership, F1 viewership was as high as has ever been recorded by Nielsen and competitive with its domestic equivalents.
