Formula 1 might be suffering from declining television audiences in almost every territory it’s shown, but the United States has bucked that trend according to the latest figures.
The sport’s annual media report shows that its American audience grew by 10.1 per cent to 12.6 million viewers during the 2014 season compared to the year before.
That bucks a trend which has seen key audiences such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and China decline over the past couple of years.
That is in part thanks to much of the coverage moving away from free-to-air broadcasts to pay-TV such as Sky. However the US coverage remains free via broadcaster NBC Sports Network.
The report says that NBC has seen “year-on-year increases for every single round shown”, whilst the average race has “attracted 85 per cent more viewers this season” when compared to 2013.
Delving deeper into the details and it seems US fans are becoming more loyal to the sport. The number of viewers who watched between four and nine races last year, increased by 128 per cent, while those who watched ten or more doubled.
That’s good news for the sport which has stuggled to get a grip on the market in America, with local motorsport series such as NASCAR and IndyCar drawing bigger audiences.
