F1: Americans like a good parade
The report also showed that the number of viewers in the U.S. who watched between four and nine races last year increased by 128% while those who watched 10 or more doubled. It adds that NBC Sports Network, which carries the series, "recorded year-on-year increases for every single round shown. On average each race shown on NBCSN attracted 85% more viewers this season when compared to 2013."
The Canadian Grand Prix, which aired on the main NBC station, drew 3.5 million unique viewers, using the industry-standard measurement of anyone who watched at least 15 non-consecutive minutes of the sport.
The U.S. bucked the sport's wider trend of declining audiences over the past six years. In that time, the global viewership has slipped steadily from 600 million viewers in 2008 to 425 million in 2014.
The major reason is that over the past three years, the sport has migrated from free-to-air broadcasters to pay channels in a slew of countries. Britain led the way in 2012 Sky Sports began broadcasting all F1 races live while its free-to-air national rival, the BBC, shows only half of them.
Still, F1 got a boost to its bottom line last year despite the drop in its audience numbers. This is because pay TV networks are prepared to pay a premium for broadcasting rights. Following the deal with Sky, F1's rights fee in Britain rose by 110% to an estimated $105 million a year. The F1 teams benefit from this as they share 63% of the sport's profits in prize money which came to $797.5 million last year according to F1's financial statements.
F1's chief executive Bernie Ecclestone said that the shared broadcasting "is working all right. We are still getting very good TV coverage. It just means that we are getting more coverage from the pay people now."
The success of the shared coverage in Britain led to similar deals in Germany and Italy with Spain following suit last year. The move has reduced the number of casual viewers, but leaves F1 with a more committed audience, according to the report. While viewer numbers in Britain fell by 1.5 million to 27.6 million in 2014, those who did watch, according to the report, were more likely to tune into more than one race. Christian Sylt/WSJ.com