It’s been just over a month since WWE Raw debuted on Netflix, but the streaming giant is reportedly already exploring another media-rights contract in sports. And this time, it isn’t with a scripted product.
Netflix is considering a bid for the U.S. broadcasting rights of Formula One, according to The Athletic. ESPN holds the rights to F1 until the end of this year, but its exclusivity period to bid on the rights has reportedly expired.
ESPN’s current deal with F1 is worth around $75 million to $90 million annually, according to Sports Business Journal. The rights previously cost $5 million per year, but the price increase followed a surge in viewers driven by Netflix’s docuseries Drive to Survive, which debuted in 2019 and will release its seventh season in March.
F1 has doubled its viewership since 2018, the first year that ESPN took over the F1 rights from NBC. ESPN networks averaged 550,000 viewers for the motorsport in 2018, and has hit at least 1.1 million viewers per season for the last three years.
The U.S. has hosted three F1 Grand Prix events for the last two years. The Miami GP held outside Hard Rock Stadium started in 2022—and has consistently been the most-watched race in the U.S.—while the Las Vegas GP was added in 2023.
Netflix declined to comment on the report.
Will Netflix Finally Commit to Live Sports?
When Business Insider reported in 2022 that Netflix was interested in Formula One rights, the streamer had yet to do much around live sports. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video had committed to NFL’s Thursday Night Football in 2021, Apple TV signed a deal with MLS in 2022, and Peacock secured the rights to the Premier League (2021).
Three years later and Netflix has already hosted several live sports events like the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight on Nov. 15 and NFL’s Christmas Day games. The two NFL games averaged 26.5 million, and were the most streamed NFL games in history. The streamer has also hosted four weeks of WWE Raw on its platform, which is its first weekly live sports show. But Netflix has still yet to commit to a non-scripted, season-long live sports product.
On an earnings call late last month, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos insisted the streamer is more focused on individual live events rather than season-long deals with sports leagues.
“We are constantly trying to broaden our programming. Live events [are] one of those things, and sports is part of those live events,” he said. “That’s a really fantastic thing, but it doesn’t really change the underlying economics of full-season, big-league sports being extremely challenging.”
But he didn’t close the door on season-long deals either. “If there was a path where we could actually make the economics work, for both us and the leagues, we would certainly explore [it],” Sarandos said.
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