Formula 1’s move behind a $12.99 monthly Apple TV subscription has created exactly the audience fight you would expect: one measurement says American reach is falling, while F1 says viewers and watch time are increasing.
The dispute covers the 2026-2030 U.S. rights deal Apple announced on October 17, 2025. Apple replaced ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC as the exclusive home for races, qualifying, Sprint sessions, and practice. New subscribers receive a seven-day trial, while Apple has also offered every practice session and selected race weekends without a subscription.
The early data isn’t exactly looking good..
ABC Made the Biggest Races Look Even BiggerIn an August 22 report, USA TODAY cited Samba TV figures for nine U.S. race telecasts in 2026. Compared with the same events in 2025, household reach fell for eight races, while Japan was flat; six of the declines were 13% or greater.
USA TODAY and Vanguardia reported audience losses of 68% for Miami, 66% in Monaco, 23% in Canada, 24% at Barcelona, 16% in Great Britain and 13% in Austria. The remaining three races were Australia at minus 4%, China at minus 1%, and Japan at 0%.
The contrast is skewed by the fact that ABC carried the Miami, Canadian, and Monaco races in 2025. USA TODAY, citing Nielsen data, reported average audiences of about 2 million viewers or higher for both races. Selected ESPN-only events, including Japan and Austria, drew around 1 million or fewer. ESPN reached more than 60 million U.S. households in 2025, while ABC was available to nearly every American television household.
USA TODAY, citing reporting from The Information, said Apple TV had roughly 45 million subscribers in 2024. That is a substantial platform, but it is not the same thing as turning on a television channel during a Sunday race.
The early-season numbers weren’t quite as bad, possibly because new viewers used trials. “F1 fans may have activated an Apple TV free trial to be able to access the F1 race,” Samba TV Vice President of Measurement Science Alyson Sprague told USA TODAY. Samba reported 127% more viewing time per tracked household for Australia and a 113% increase for Monaco. Its data also showed that 30% of 2026 Formula 1 viewers had not watched Apple TV in late 2025.
Apple Says F1 Is Growing AnywayBen Koo, the owner and editor of Awful Announcing, where we spotted this story, posted the following to X:
“Already got a huffy email from F1 PR about this. Everyone with a brain knows what happens when you leave TV and go to Apple TV. If you don’t want negative headlines about declining viewership….don’t take the Apple TV money.
“That’s the tradeoff. You chose. Deal with it.”
The disagreement comes from what each system counts. Samba gauges household audiences from opt-in smart television panels, drawing on chip-integrated technology found in 24 leading brands across over 100 nations. USA TODAY confirmed that this is not interchangeable with Nielsen’s average-audience measurement.
AppleInsider’s Wesley Hilliard added that Samba does not track viewing on Apple devices or certain Android app sessions. It is a large sample, but not a complete census of Apple TV viewing.
That helps explain why Apple said the 2026 Australian Grand Prix beat the comparable ESPN audience, which averaged 1.1 million viewers in 2025, even though Samba measured Australia down 4%. Apple did not provide a 2026 audience total.
Liberty Media’s August 6 filing said something very different. Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said, “viewership up year-over-year, season-to-date and total hours watched up 13%.” Liberty supplied neither an audience total nor its methodology. Apple executive Eddy Cue said, “We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with Formula 1.”
The product itself is a lot larger than just a conventional broadcast, offering English and Spanish commentary, as many as 30 supplementary feeds, and Multiview on supported Apple devices. F1 TV Premium is included with the Apple subscription. Apple says the U.S. fan base reached 52 million in 2024, with 47% of newer fans in a 2025 survey aged 18-24 and more than half women.
Still, Ben Koo is right. The move to Apple, plus a underwhelming start to the 2026 regulations has seen fans of the championship complain over social media. While it’s maybe apparent that true viewership figures aren’t known by any of these outlets, things aren’t pointing in a positive direction in regards to how the fans are feeing right now.
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