Formula 1 used to be a television product with a niche, older, mostly male audience. It is now the fastest-growing sports property in the world. Nielsen's latest global fan reach report puts the F1 fanbase at an estimated 831 million people, growing faster year over year than the Premier League and the NBA. That growth was not built on race broadcasts alone. It was built in the feed.
The 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey, run by Formula 1 and Motorsport Network across more than 100,000 fans in 186 countries, tells the story clearly. New fans are younger, more female and more American than ever before. Three in four new fans are women. In the US, 70 percent of Gen Z fans engage with F1 content daily, mostly through streaming video and social media. These fans discovered the sport through Drive to Survive, TikTok edits, paddock fit checks and driver personalities, not through Sunday afternoon broadcasts.
The modern F1 fan's weekend starts long before lights out. Paddock arrival outfits trend on Instagram. Qualifying edits circulate on TikTok within minutes. Creators break down strategy on YouTube and Twitch, and the conversation runs all week between races. More than half of surveyed fans regularly reshare F1 social video. This is not an audience that tunes in. It is an audience that participates.
Here is the part most sponsors have not caught up with. The same survey found that 76 percent of fans believe sponsors enhance the F1 experience, one in three are more likely to buy from an F1 partner, and that figure rises to around 40 percent among Gen Z. The receptiveness is there. The question is whether brands show up where this audience actually lives.
A logo on a car buys awareness among people watching the race. It does nothing for the millions following the sport through creators, clips and culture between races. The brands winning in F1 right now are the ones activating socially around the sport: creator watch parties, platform-native content, culture-led collaborations that give fans something to share. That is where we operate. It is how we kept Peroni front of mind around Monza with F1 creators and watch parties, and how we help Cash App show up around the VCARB partnership with content fans actually choose to watch.
F1's growth story is a social story. The brands that treat it that way will take a disproportionate share of the fastest-growing audience in sport.