The beat goes on at Netflix, which continues to expand its live sports portfolio.
Netflix has agreed to share the upcoming season of its Formula 1 “Drive to Survive” docuseries with the league’s new U.S. media rights partner Apple TV in exchange for rights to simulcast the May 24 Canadian Grand Prix, it was announced Thursday. The race will mark the first live F1 event ever on Netflix, which has become associated with the sport since the debut of “Drive to Survive” in 2019.
The agreement only covers the United States, with “Drive to Survive” remaining available exclusively on Netflix overseas.
Under the deal, Netflix will also carry all practice, qualifying and sprint sessions leading into the race, which takes place over Memorial Day weekend.
F1 is just the latest addition to the Netflix live sports portfolio. The streamer is less than a month out from beginning its new three-year rights deal with Major League Baseball, which includes Opening Day, the Home Run Derby and this season’s Field of Dreams Game. It also has one more year left on its deal to carry Christmas Day NFL games, and next year will carry the entire FIFA Women’s World Cup.
As for Apple, the acquisition of “Drive to Survive” could prove a powerful promotional platform for live races. It has long been assumed — though never shown conclusively — that the series contributed to a sharp rise in Formula 1 viewership over the past decade. That assumption is also one of the reasons why Netflix had long been viewed as a potential contender for live F1 rights.
But the growth in F1 viewership also coincided with races moving to the ESPN networks, providing a level of exposure that it is not likely Apple TV can replicate.
In hosting “Drive to Survive,” live racing and the F1 TV service — to say nothing of the “F1” feature film it distributed last year — Apple would seem to have consolidated all of the major Formula 1 properties into one service. It remains to be seen whether that will be enough to overcome the smaller footprint of Apple TV as compared to ESPN.
