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mong the gloomy nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, Formula One (F1) have announced they have emerged from the fog relatively unscathed in comparison with other sports in 2020 in their latest audience figure release.

Despite having four fewer races than the previous year, the average audience per Grand Prix was 87.4 million, which is a slight rise from a seven-year average of 85 million.

F1 president and CEO, Stefano Domenicali, said new races locations such as Portugal and Bahrain have allowed the brand to expand in such unprecedented times.

“We delivered 17 races, something many thought impossible earlier in the year,” Domenicali said.

“We did it safely and brought excitement and new races to our fans around the world.

“We saw only a marginal reduction in TV audiences.

“Caused by multiple reasons but clearly driven by a shortened and limited geographical calendar compared to 2019,” he said.

There were strong year-on-year (YoY) results in a number of markets, including: China (+43%), Netherlands (+28%), Russia (+71%), and perhaps most notably USA (+1%), with the latter seeing an increase despite no local time zone events and no US Grand Prix.

Digital platforms have been extremely successful with F1 platforms becoming the second fastest growing major sports league worldwide across social media sites, with the largest highlight being total engagement on the channels up 99%, with 810 million interactions.

F1 is now outperforming La Liga, NBA, PGA Tour, and the EPL, whilst digital share of total minutes has grown 3% since last year.

On the back of these figures, F1 have announced a potential tweak to qualifying formats at selected Grand Prix this season.

The decision is based on engaging fans with new innovations without losing the traditional approaches to racing.