and a Huge Bag of Cash
You won’t see GM in F1 anytime soon
On the last day of what felt like an eight-week January, noted European racing series, Formula One made headlines in the United States when it announced that adding an 11th team to its starting grid wasn’t in its best interest as a business entity. The team being denied entry to the series that already includes squads like Kick Sauber and Visa Cash App RB? A collaborative effort between Andretti Global and General Motors.
Along with possibly Carol Shelby, Andretti is the name most synonymous with speed in America, and rightly so. Mario Andretti won the F1 World Championship in 1978. He is the only F1 Champ who’s also collected wins at the Daytona 500 and Indy 500 (and the last American driver to take a checkered flag in Formula 1). He won four IndyCar titles and is the only person to win US Driver of the Year in three decades. For the last two years, his namesake, Andretti Global, has been building to a modern F1 bid. Over that span, it won a title in an open-wheel series, pursued and earned approval from the FIA to discuss expansion into F1, and, most importantly, secured GM/Cadillac as a sponsor and powertrain provider.
General Motors is one of the largest and most profitable vehicle manufacturers in the world, and it brings its own credibility to the international racing table. Since its inception in 1999, its Corvette Racing wing has earned nine class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, four at Daytona, and 16 overall team championships to go along with 15 driver’s championships in the various series where it has competed. Cadillac has also stamped its Crest on the highest reaches of endurance racing in recent years, earning four consecutive Rolex 24 at Daytona and North American Endurance Cup Championships from 2017-2020 and IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championships in 2017, 2018, and 2021.
The exclusion of such deserving, high-profile partners that also happen to represent one of the biggest markets for potential growth in the world (the United States of America, which, despite some recent economic hiccups, still lands in the world’s top 10 in GDP per capita and boasts 332 million citizens, an estimated 70% of which are active sports fans) isn’t just a headscratcher; it’s been hailed as an insult with many American fans calling for a national boycott of F1 until 2028 when GM’s “power unit” is ready and the series “could, maybe, possibly, but no guarantees, reconsider” it’s current position on adding an 11th team to the grid.
Now, your author will be the first to admit that he’s not that into F1, but I wanted to be once General Motors – a company that I feel a deep personal connection to (and as the top automaker in the US in 90 out of the last 91 years, I’m certainly not alone in feeling that connection) – was involved. But, alas, Formula 1 seems pretty content with its newfound popularity in the US, which is owed almost in full to the Netflix (an American company) series Drive to Survive. Though, one quick glance at the Stateside viewership numbers tell the real story: F1 is barely scratching the tip of the iceberg in the US market.
What was F1 thinking!?
Benefitting from the Netflix bump, November’s highly publicized F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix drew 1.3 million viewers on ESPN. Conveniently, America’s greatest sporting event, also called Sin City home this past weekend. An astonishing 123.4 million people tuned in to CBS to see the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers play in Super Bowl LVIII (that’s 58 to all of the non-ancient Romans out there), making it the most watched telecast in history. Viewers equal revenue, and to get in on the SB action, advertisers shelled out $7 million for every 30 seconds of commercial air time. That having that many butts in seats for a single event also led to a huge spike in “Big Game” adjacent earnings, with the estimated $23.1 billion that Americans bet on the game itself. Big picture, the NFL raked-in over $4 billion in licensed merchandise sales last year, and along with TV deals and ticket sales, the league is realistically targeting total revenues of $25 billion by 2027.
In the US, football is king, and onlookers will rightly argue that F1 will never compare favorably to the Super Bowl, but if it can expand its reach with average Americans, there’s no telling how close F1 and its broadcast partners could push their respective bottom lines. While the NFL – and even big-time College Football – where the National Championship drew 25 million sets of eyeballs this year – are out of reach for F1 in the foreseeable future, even the American professional sports leagues that are going through some public issues with viewer engagement still completely dwarf F1’s numbers. Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association have lost market share in recent years – the 2023 World Series was the least-watched in history, but it still averaged 9.11 million viewers per game, and the NBA Finals that bottomed out at 7.5 million average viewers in 2020 have bounced back with 12ish million tuning in in ’22 and ’23, respectively. While that’s a far cry from 30+ million Americans that tuned in to see Michael Jordan’s final shot for the Bulls in ’98 or the 20.4 million mark from Curry-LeBron in 2017, both leagues are doing what F1 should be doing (more of) in the US and fostering major growth in other markets – in Japan and Latin America, Baseball has never been bigger, and the NBA has become an absolute force in both China and Europe.
With their current domestic issues and F1 going through a growth period, both of these leagues could be considered legitimate long-term yardsticks if the racing series plays its cards right. While the 17-game season (plus playoffs) of the NFL lines up nicely with Formula 1, the difference between a 23-race F1 season and NBA/MLB calendars of 82 and 162 games, respectively, make direct comparison difficult. In reality, something with a smaller footprint, like horse racing, would be a better comp, but even against that niche, F1 has some reeling-in to do. The 149th running of the Kentucky Derby sprinted its way to an audience of 14.8 million in a down year, per NBC. That makes the Run for the Roses an 11.4x more desirable watch in the US when compared to F1’s headline US event for the ’23 season. In this light, the decision to exclude General Motors and Andretti from the prime directive of reaching John Q. America and his hard-earned dollars seems less like a misstep and more like a major gaffe!
“Andradillac’s” Road to Retribution
While F1 continues its slow assentation in this country with some clear conquest targets laid out above and GM’s primary domestic rival hopping on the already-rolling Austrian Red Bull train, Cadillac and Andretti need to be laser-focused on one thing during their upcoming four-year stint in purgatory. If the All-American combination of Andretti/Cadillac wants to take full advantage of the cards they’ve been dealt and go on a John Wick-style vengeance tour, cementing itself as a group of American folk heroes, it is absolutely imperative that they find an American driver to build the brand around. In general, most Americans don’t have much interest in sports outside of the mainstream like tennis, swimming, or cycling. That is until someone like Pete Sampras, the Williams sisters, Michael Phelps, and Lance Armstrong transforms those fringe sports into appointment television and unifying points of national pride. The next step for “Andradillac” is clear and absolutely imperative. They need to scour this great land from sea to shining sea for a compelling Tiger Woods-type to capture the nation’s imagination on behalf of their team and the niche sport in which it wishes to compete. In other words, the only way to rally the nation and properly return fire at F1 is to mint the next Mario Andretti. If there’s one thing we’ve proven time and again, it’s that the only thing America loves more than a winner, it’s a home-grown winner. Any time there’s a chance for that champion to shine on an international stage and bring one home for the Stars and Stripes, we’ll all be there cheering them on – and we’ll spend big to do it!
