Formula 1’s Apple TV era is producing two very different audience stories: fewer U.S. households are being reached, while the viewers who remain appear to be watching longer. The split highlights the tradeoff between broad TV distribution and a streaming-first sports strategy.
Formula 1’s U.S. household TV reach has declined since its move to Apple TV, according to analytics firm Samba. F1 left ESPN for exclusive Apple TV coverage after the 2025 season, and Samba’s 2026 data found lower household reach for eight of the nine races it analyzed. The shift matters because Formula 1 is testing whether a more focused streaming audience can offset the broad exposure it once received through ESPN and ABC.
The numbers do not tell a one-direction story. Liberty Media, Formula 1’s parent company, says total hours watched on Apple TV are up 13% year over year, suggesting that fewer households may be tuning in but those that do are spending more time with the sport.
Fewer homes are finding races
Samba’s measure is household TV reach: the number of U.S. homes its panel detected watching a race. It is not the same thing as an average-minute audience figure, total streams or a count of individual viewers.
Using automatic content-recognition technology across 14.4 million smart TVs nationwide, Samba found declines in eight of nine 2026 races examined. The Japanese Grand Prix was unchanged, while the first three races were relatively close to prior levels: Australia was down 4% and China fell 1%.
The bigger declines arrived later in the season. Samba reported that Miami’s household reach fell 68% from a year earlier, and Monaco was down 66%.
That pattern puts the spotlight on accessibility as much as on fan interest. A race that moves from a widely available TV channel to a subscription streaming service may lose casual viewers even if committed fans continue to follow every weekend.
Apple TV changed the distribution equation
Before 2026, ESPN carried Formula 1 in the United States, with some marquee races also appearing on sister network ABC. Those outlets were already part of many cable and live-TV streaming bundles.
ABC’s reach gave selected events an especially large platform. USA TODAY Sports noted that the Miami, Monaco and Canadian Grands Prix averaged roughly 2 million viewers or more on ABC in 2025, based on Nielsen figures. ESPN broadcasts of races such as Japan and Austria drew around 1 million viewers or fewer.
Apple TV is a different proposition. New customers can receive a one-week free trial, but the service then costs $12.99 a month. Apple says all practice sessions and select race weekends are available without a subscription, but regular race access is tied to its platform.
That setup may be convenient for people already inside Apple’s ecosystem, but it removes the accidental exposure available when a race is one channel away in a cable package or lands on broadcast television.
Engagement is rising among viewers
Formula 1 disputes the idea that the reach data alone defines the transition. In a statement provided to USA TODAY Sports, F1 President and CEO Stefano Domenicali said viewership was up year over year, season to date, and that total hours watched had increased 13%.
Samba’s own findings support part of that claim. It said average minutes watched per household rose 127% for the Australian Grand Prix and 113% for Monaco.
That creates an important distinction. A smaller audience that watches substantially longer can be valuable to a streaming service trying to retain subscribers, sell advertising or build viewing habits around a weekly sports property. It is less useful, however, if F1’s priority is reaching as many potential fans as possible.
Neither perspective is inherently misleading; they answer different questions. Household reach examines the breadth of the audience. Total hours and minutes watched describe depth of engagement among the homes that tuned in.
The subscriber question is unresolved
Samba vice president of measurement science Alyson Sprague offered one possible explanation for the drop: some fans may have started an Apple TV trial specifically to watch Formula 1, then decided not to continue as paying customers.
That is a hypothesis, not a confirmed account of why individual viewers left. The available data does not identify every reason a household did or did not watch a particular race, and race times, competing programming, team performance and differences in event distribution can all influence a single weekend’s audience.
There is also evidence that Formula 1 is bringing Apple new users. Samba reported that 30% of people who watched F1 in 2026 had not used Apple TV during the second half of 2025.
For Apple, that may be the strategic prize: use a premium global sport to introduce new customers to a broader service. For Formula 1, the harder question is whether those new streaming customers eventually replace the broader audience available through legacy television.
Why comparisons need caution
The ESPN and ABC figures cited in the discussion are Nielsen average-audience estimates, while Samba reports household reach from its smart-TV measurement system. They are useful signals about distribution and viewing behavior, but they are not directly interchangeable statistics.
Platform scale is also uneven. Nielsen data cited by USA TODAY Sports put ESPN’s reach at more than 60 million households in 2025, while ABC reaches nearly all U.S. television households. Apple TV’s subscriber footprint is more difficult to establish publicly; The Information estimated about 45 million subscriptions in 2024.
Audience measurement has become more complicated as sports viewing spreads across apps, devices and bundles. A smart-TV panel may not capture every viewing path, while a company’s internal total-hours figure offers a different window into behavior without providing a directly comparable public reach total.
F1 has time to prove the model
Apple’s Formula 1 deal runs through the 2030 season, giving both sides time to refine the strategy. Apple already carries every Major League Soccer match and streams a weekly Major League Baseball doubleheader, making F1 part of a wider push into live sports.
The early picture is therefore not simply that Formula 1 is gaining or losing viewers. It is moving from broad conventional-TV availability to a paid streaming environment, and the metrics show the cost and potential benefit of that move at the same time.
For now, Samba’s data indicates that F1 is reaching fewer U.S. TV households. Liberty Media’s figures indicate that the viewers who stay are watching more. The next test is whether Apple TV can turn that engaged core into a larger, lasting audience without sacrificing the visibility that helped Formula 1 grow in the United States.
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