The Genius of Drive to Survive
A look at the Formula 1 and Netflix partnership
Formula 1 races are back again this weekend, and I (and the new Ferrari fan inside me) am so excited! I have been following this sport for the last four years, and it all started with watching the Drive to Survive series on Netflix.
The interesting thing is that it was not just me that got interested in this sport because of the series, but it was also 73 million other people. I have been thinking about this sudden recognition of the sport that got itself to become more popular than ever and decided to look a little more into this marketing strategy.
In 2015, the former chief executive of the Formula 1 Group, Bernie Ecclestone, argued that the sport did not need to capture the market of the younger generations and that social media was not valuable. He was focused on getting revenue from the people who had big money and could afford the sport.
While the strategy made some sense considering the luxurious reputation it holds, it failed.
Next year in 2016, Liberty Media, an American media company, completed its acquisition of F1, and their first order of business was doing exactly what Ecclestone didn’t. They decided to change F1’s marketing strategy to align with the US audience that cared a lot about the social content.
Very soon, Formula 1 announced a deal with Netflix for a docuseries. Well, the announcement wasn’t really taken seriously. There was hardly any attention from a new audience. Some of the biggest teams even refused to participate.
Mercedes, who had been continuously winning world championships for years, did not want to participate. Neither did Ferrari (the big global brand) want any part of it. Red Bull was the only big team willing to share a bit of what happens off the grid, maybe because they know the value of good marketing.
But who knew that this is exactly what made the Netflix series so special. The creators were forced to focus on Red Bull’s struggle to snatch the championship and how there was a whole different strategic thinking to the mid and bottom tiers in the race.
This was the first time fans had a chance to build a relationship with all 20 drivers on the grid. There is so much tension in the sport, not just between teams (that is common in any sport) but also between teammates (not so common). And who doesn't love some fiery dynamic between and within teams!
When you see behind the scenes off the grid, you see the people. And that is what Netflix has been playing. You don’t just think about teams. You think about the team principals who make the big and small decisions and are responsible for winning or losing more than a race — tens of millions in capital.
From the very start, episodes in the series have focused on race strategies and how drivers are bought into teams while the season is ongoing. Great examples of such tactical dramas between team principals are Horner (Red Bull) and Wolff (Mercedes) or Brown (McLaren) and Stroll (Aston Martin).
Well, when you bring in new drivers, you are replacing a present driver. And when you have two drivers in each team, how do you decide which driver to replace? There’s good politics (for the lack of a better word) to that.
This is one of the ways rivalries between teammates are heated. Only one driver has the exact same car as you — your teammate. If you lose to some other team, you might just blame the car. But if your teammate beats you in the same car, you don’t really have an excuse. He just performed better than you.
Plus, the fact that these are the top 20 drivers in the world in a sport so competitive, you want to be the winner and better than every other driver. It doesn’t matter if they play in the same team. If you can drive faster, you want to be the one higher on the podium.
And Netflix has made sure their storytelling is just perfect here, with some of the best examples being Verstappen and Checo (Red Bull) and Hamilton and Bottas (Mercedes).
Everyone knew these dynamics existed, but Netflix made it visible. It brings new fans because they can relate much more with the drivers, no matter whether they like a team or not. Fans now anticipate the rivalries off the grid based on the action on the grid.
Netflix does a fantastic job of identifying season-long stories and maximizing the drama. It makes content for gossip, and that just brings more interest from viewers.
Being one of the large global capital markets, F1 had to find a way into the U.S., and they targeted the right demographic.
The viewership in the U.S. keeps on jumping (not just rising or growing but jumping) every year, breaking records. In 2022, there were 1.2 million viewers, which was a 28% increase from 2021, when there was a 54% increase from 2020. According to ESPN, there have also been significant jumps in viewership among younger audiences (49% over 2021) and women (34% over 2021). There are now new fangirl communities like Two Girls 1 Formula that push for the love of the sport through social media and customized merch for women.
The success has clearly translated to the dollars. Libert Media has been reporting increases in revenue and valuation. Recently being $2.5 billion in revenue in 2022, a 20% increase from 2021’s total of $2.1 billion.
The interesting part of this strategy is that Netflix is the one that pays F1 for the series and not the other way around. This show is one big promotion for the sport that itself provides F1 a profit.
I’ll leave it to that and get back to watching some races now!
Hope you liked what you read! If you enjoyed this letter, please share it with those other F1 fans. ✌️