The cost of being an F1 fan

Almost 10 years ago, Autosport asked: “Is Formula 1 a rip off?” We crunched the numbers on ticket prices, subscriptions in the early days of the pay TV takeover, team merchandise, travel and more – everything we thought you needed to be an F1 fan in 2015.

Those were the days before Liberty Media took over as the championship’s commercial rights holder. Since it did so, the company has massively changed the way F1 is promoted and consumed.

Here we present a fresh assessment for 2024.

Given Autosport’s typical audience, we have kept things UK-focused for simplicity (with a few exceptions) and dropped much of the previous focus on travel. After all, some are willing to pay much more than others to attend races – in the UK or around the world – while even getting to events has changed, with an increased focus on park-and-ride schemes alongside existing public transport infrastructures. City-based races are massively up, too.

We’ve kept plenty the same, however, including assessing the cost of and ways to watch F1 on TV, as well as how much you’ll pay for team kit these days. There’s also a new assessment of which races offer best bang for your buck from a sporting perspective, plus a look into the new deals Liberty has made to promote F1 since 2017. Here’s what we discovered.

Following F1 at home

F1 has a huge and growing global audience based on TV viewing figures – but it all comes at a cost

Photo by: Mark Sutton

Outside the United States and Italy, F1 fans have just one chance to watch the action live in their home nations every year. This, and motorsport’s fast and complex nature, means it remains among the most TV-focused sports.

In data provided to Autosport by FOM (Formula One Management), it is claimed that F1’s global TV audience average for each race is now 58.9million people. That’s up from a 48.2million average in 2018, when FOM fully started to track its audience data under Liberty ownership.

In the UK since 2012, Sky Sports has held the rights to show every F1 race live. Since our last look at such things, Channel 4 now shows just one race live on terrestrial TV each year, compared to the BBC showing 10 in 2015.

Because of Sky’s exclusivity arrangement, this in itself significantly sells UK TV viewers short on what F1 offers to viewers in other territories

Compared to 2015, the cost of the packages required to watch F1 on Sky has increased by £72 per year to £636 – although this is under the rate of inflation. To follow the Channel 4 offering, viewers will need to buy a BBC TV licence – at £169.50. An alternative, and cheaper, way to follow all 24 races is to buy a Sky Sports day pass from Now TV at £14.99 a pop.

Taking the Now TV approach would mean missing out on the full driver onboards selection Sky offers its F1 channel customers via its Sky Sports app, Q and Glass systems. But because of Sky’s exclusivity arrangement, this in itself significantly sells UK TV viewers short on what F1 offers to viewers in other territories. This comes via the F1TV OTT (over-the-top) platform introduced by FOM in 2018.

F1TV’s ‘Pro’ top offering provides two commentary teams of the live action for English language viewers (one is FOM’s in-house production, the other is Sky’s), plus all the onboard feeds from every car. And, critically, to viewers in select territories outside the UK, where the ‘Pro’ level is not available due to the Sky deal, these remain available at any time afterwards.

If you can multi-task well enough to follow multi-feeds via the Sky Sports App, along with its TV coverage, that’s fine. But anyone wanting to see additional action at their leisure cannot.

It is more expensive to follow F1 coverage on Sky than in 2015, but increase is under the rate of inflation

Photo by: Mark Sutton

UK F1TV subscribers can only get its ‘Access’ level at a cost of £19.99. This does come with access to live timing, driver tracker and limited telemetry data, which Sky also provides.

In terms of non-live TV content, Netflix’s Drive to Survive is credited with massively boosting F1’s popularity globally, and many other sports have tried to launch their own versions, with varying degrees of success. It was far from the first such behind-the-scenes sport documentary, but its heavy narrative focus and release timing ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic – where viewers had much more time to consume the show’s first three series by the second year of lockdowns in the west – proved very successful.

In the UK, a standard Netflix subscription costs £10.99. As well as DTS, a new series focusing on the all-female F1 Academy championship is currently in production. Netflix is also bringing out a drama series based on the life of Ayrton Senna next month.

Since 2022, F1 has doubled its official gaming releases, with F1 Manager sold alongside the annual season-specific racing title released by Electronic Arts since it bought long-time F1 game producer Codemasters in 2021. The PlayStation 5 versions of these games cost £39.99 and £69.99 respectively.

F1’s other major ‘at home’ project is the upcoming Apple-produced, Joseph Kosinski-directed and Brad Pitt-starring F1 film. This is essentially a big-budget marketing follow-up to DTS, as F1 attempts to replicate Mattel’s success with Barbie in showcasing its intellectual property to a wider audience. The average UK adult cinema ticket is £7.92.

Outside UK homes are the ‘F1 Arcade’ bars packed with game simulators in London and Birmingham. One 30-minute race session costs £17.95 per person, alongside the usual city-centre prices for food and drink. F1 opened its first international Arcades in Boston and Washington DC, with a further bar planned to open in Las Vegas.

Currently running at London’s ExCeL is the F1 Exhibition that first opened in Madrid last year. Tickets for the display, which shows items from F1’s history and looks to its future, cost £33 at peak times.

F1 media costs

Following F1 at live locations

There is nothing like being at an event in person to soak up the atmosphere – we’ve worked out what it costs to attend the races

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Although F1 is best followed on screen when it comes to understanding the 600 individual races (including sprints) completed by every driver across the current 24-event calendar, there’s still nothing like being at a circuit and seeing the cars live. The smell of the burning tyres, the wheel squeals from driver mistakes, the roar of the crowd – they’re cliches for a reason.

Below is the breakdown for attending each race on the 2024 calendar. As with our 2015 calculation, we’ve stuck with assessing the cheapest single-day (Sunday) ticket for each race (where available) to provide a comparison in that period.

Many prices have risen above the rate of inflation – but with several notable exceptions. Singapore, for example, has barely changed in terms of its offering at this price point

This also means that F1 events can be compared to other forms of motorsport, different sports and live events generally in 2024 – examples of which we’ve also provided here. Typically, these single-day tickets provide General Admission access only and so do not come with reserved seats.

From the comparison of F1 single-raceday tickets, we can see that many prices have risen above the rate of inflation – but with several notable exceptions. Singapore, for example, has barely changed in terms of its offering at this price point, while there are interesting direct comparison alterations in the relevant price levels for Silverstone and Monza.

Ticket prices have remained steady in Singapore

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Of course, there is much debate about the appropriate level of ticket prices in 2024 – something that’s not limited to sporting events. Rising prices had been occurring even before the current cost of living crisis turbocharged the focus on higher payments, as well as hidden fees and additional charges on ticketing websites.

The British GP has courted much controversy for its prices in recent years, particularly after its dynamic pricing debacle when tickets for its 2023 event went on sale in September 2022. We also recognise that many fans feel steep costs of food and drink at races, as well as parking and camping costs being taken into consideration, often leave them frustrated.

There can also be various offers around specific ticket types from different races. For example, the Las Vegas event (where FOM is effectively the race promoter, another big change from its previous era) made headlines for its very high ticket prices across the board when it joined the calendar in 2023. But it is now offering a three-day general admission ticket at $462, but with food and drink for all days included.

Many F1 fans will also want to attend a whole race weekend and take in the practice, qualifying and support series showings too. As our 2015-24 comparison table shows, there has been a notable increased prevalence of races selling multi-day tickets now as standard.

This is up to individual promoters and their business models, but in many cases – and with prices rising sharply for grandstand or hospitality tickets – this means prices for groups or families can quickly reach many hundreds of pounds.

A key difference here from 2015 is how FOM now requires promoters to provide additional value – typically in the form of concerts and shows, but it can also mean better investment in facilities and transport access – in their ticket prices. This has led to many F1 events being promoted more along the lines of music and other festival types. In the data given to Autosport by FOM, it is claimed that the overall annual race attendance figure is now 6million. F1 also claims that 40% of people attending a race in 2023 did so for the first time.

While the numbers must speak for themselves here, and annoyingly premium prices for concessions at live events is a long-standing issue, we decided to look at statistics that matter to many fans – perhaps including those who feel alienated by the championship’s recent push for races to hold non-sporting productions and feature altered sporting formats.

There are lots of opportunities for spectators to see the cars at Monaco

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

We have therefore gone through every race on the current calendar (not including sprints) and worked out which races are best for seeing the cars most in racing scenarios. Simply put, how many times and for how long will you see the racing machines in action, having laid down your hard-earned cash for the privilege.

This is a subjective exercise – it may be that visiting the hallowed ground at certain tracks (assuming you can stomach the traffic trouble common at many of the purpose-built facilities) is worth it even though their score on assessment is low.

Monaco tops the list – which isn’t brilliant for watching F1 on a budget given its tax-haven status – and this comes down to its tight confines and concise lap distance

To calculate this, we ranked the races in order of each one’s most recent dry race duration, then redid the order based on their race lap totals each year. Unsurprisingly, shorter, slower layouts come out higher – but if you want to wander around a circuit to see F1 cars in action at different corner types, this may be an important consideration.

Monaco tops the list – which isn’t brilliant for watching F1 on a budget given its tax-haven status – and this comes down to its tight confines and concise lap distance. You also won’t ever see the current ground-effect machines in the corner types where they’re designed to work best. Handily, the next six races are in locations where the track is either in or close to a major metropolis.

Best F1 track for spectator action value for money

Showing that you follow F1

Official merchandise is not cheap to come by

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

F1 merchandise remains a major part of the fan experience. FOM outsources its online merchandise offering via the Fanatics platform that sells official products from all the US sports leagues. It means you can buy comparative merch from all the teams – although they don’t all sell the same stuff – from the same place. But we found that prices differ (usually slightly lower, in our research) if you buy from team websites directly, so as ever it pays to shop around.

But given the compact and official Fanatics platform, we’ve used this to compare prices for various items to show your support in similar ways for different teams. We’re focusing on the F1 squads and their generic team-branded clothing and kit but, if you wanted a T-shirt or cap with the number and name of your favourite driver, it seems that you will have to pay slightly more.

The table above shows how prices stack up for the teams in typical merchandise purchases. By way of comparison from our 2015 investigation, taking the most expensive cap then (Ferrari’s, at £32) and contrasting with Sauber being top today, we can see that costs on these items specifically come in roughly in line with inflation (£42.96).

In some specific examples – Red Bull’s team cap, which was £25 in 2015 and is now £28 – the prices haven’t gone up that much at all. We also note how Aston Martin’s team merch is regularly towards the top of the comparisons below, which reflects its parent company’s positioning as a luxury brand (even among F1 rivals that are doing exactly the same).

F1 team merchandise compared

In terms of buying F1 team merchandise at live races, we went to the official stores at the British and Hungarian races over the summer to compare prices.

We discovered, rather inevitably, that buying the same products at a grand prix costs more than online. The equivalent Mercedes team cap is £38 online but being sold for £60 at Silverstone. Interestingly, convert Hungarian forints to pounds and the price for the same product at the Hungaroring was only £4.30 cheaper. This is within the context of the Budapest race’s popularity within cost consideration for many British fans each year – as the ticket price table shows, a GP ticket can come in at nearly half the price.

Buying merchandise at the track will set you back more than online, although Silverstone was only marginally more expensive than the Hungaroring

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Track merchandise is sold by Puma-owned Stichd (the company also makes apparel for Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston and Williams) – with prices set from specific market research for each location. Merchandise offered at the circuits is bought by Stichd and then sold on to fans.

Now that Ferrari is selling a Scuderia football shirt, we compared the price with the new home shirt of reigning Premier League champions Manchester City. This came out at an £80 high-scoring draw. UK fans wanting to buy the new home strip of 2023-24 Serie A champion Internazionale will have to fork out £150. Manchester City team caps come in at £18 from the team’s website.

Other sports merchandise

Those who can afford it – and these prices are simply staggering – might be interested in a new F1 team upcycling initiative from Mercedes and its team wear partner Puma. Made in conjunction with designers from Raeburn, the team has made jackets, bags, hoodies, T-shirts and hats using panels from the Nomex fire suits used in the 2022 season.

Diecast model cars have risen on average by slightly above the rate of inflation

A press release announcing the project claimed “the collection blends motorsport engineering with cutting-edge fashion design returned to fans, featuring pieces crafted from the race-worn suits of Mercedes F1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, as well as the team’s mechanics”.

It is unclear how many items in the collection were produced, but at the time of writing they are all sold out at Mercedes’ team website. The ‘Masterpiece Anorak’ retails at £1275, trousers £675 and T-shirt £350.

In one final area of F1 fan merchandise for you to consider, costs have, however, changed more notably compared to clothing covered above. Diecast model cars, for example, have risen on average by slightly above the rate of inflation. But this is really just in relation to 2015 – because as we noted at the time, a £40 1:18 model bought in 1996 would cost £59.08 nine years ago and £77.93 now. This shows prices have risen less steeply of late.

In this area, albeit with less detailed models, F1 has also made recent moves to provide official offerings with Lego and Mattel’s Hot Wheels toy car brand.

How following F1 has changed

The explosion of social media – and F1’s growing embrace of it – means there are many more ways of accessing motorsport’s pinnacle than a decade ago

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

From here, we leave the cold realm of statistics and reflect on something rather less tangible, but ultimately still very important given the emotive power of sport and its cash-guzzling extras. This is how the experience of being a fan has changed in the past decade and with the Liberty takeover again in mind.

Famously, former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone felt social media was a “nonsense” that he “couldn’t see any value in”. And one of the first things the new FOM regime did was unlock the restrictions around teams, drivers and the championship itself posting into the internet’s ether.

That won’t be new in 2024, but it does represent a big difference to our last assessment of how much it costs to be an F1 fan. After all, social media accounts are free (in terms of the major platforms and their basic offerings) and that allows for fans to interact with the championship in different ways compared to previous generations.

Clips of F1 track action and behind-the-scenes shots from the paddock are widespread now when before there was a strict clampdown. F1’s data claims that the championship now gets an average of 10.9million people watching qualifying and race highlights on YouTube – versus 2.5million in 2018.

It is often claimed that the prevalence of social media F1 access means a direct link to the protagonists, but plenty of drivers have long left handling their social channels to professional admins. Russell, for example, recently explained that he only signs off “on all the captions and the photographs – I always send through my content” to a specific team.

“It’s a double-edged sword, to be honest,” he added. “Because I really enjoy seeing the memes and the banter that goes around. And that stuff is positive – you’re spinning off the funniness and certain comments and whatever. But then on the flipside, there’s a lot of hate and negativity. And it’s almost impossible to avoid.”

According to F1’s own calculations, its total follower count on its official social media platforms comes in at 90million and up from 12.1million – a claimed 744% rise from 2018 when it fully started capturing data. Adding up the championship’s official English language account followers from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Threads comes in at 80.1million.

Russell reckons the growing importance of social media in F1 is a double-edged sword

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

The championship also claims, without providing a headline figure, that one in three of its total fanbase started following F1 in the past four years and that one in three TV viewers are under 35 years old, with a 2% increase in fans under 35 overall compared to 2018. F1 says it has registered a 5% rise in terms of its female audience – from 37% of its overall calculations in 2018 to 42% today.

FOM also says its official website and app got 104million unique visitors in 2023 versus 47million in 2018. Here, it’s important to note how much more of a publisher F1 has become under Liberty. Unlike the Bernie days, where selling TV contracts and exclusive advertising spots was the king approach, now F1 provides content offerings that put it in some competition with broadcasters and independent publications such as Autosport.

Here we can reflect how the F1 media landscape overall has changed considerably in recent years, too – particularly the proliferation of ‘clickbait’ websites that spin up stories written by reputable publications and sell the same information in a deliberately sensationalist way.

F1 has official agreements with UK high-street brand H&M to sell clothes featuring F1 IP, while in the US there is a similar deal with PacSun

But it’s not just media where FOM now takes a different approach – a secondary element to consider also chimes with much of the information we’ve covered on merchandise and fan costs. This is how, since 2015, F1 has struck deals with high-street apparel brands, while also selling its own branded merchandise at race events and online. Autosport understands this is selling in increasing numbers, which suggests fans are not just keen to highlight their affiliation to teams and drivers.

F1 has official agreements with UK high-street brand H&M to sell clothes featuring F1 IP, while in the US there is a similar deal with PacSun that is aimed specifically at selling clothes to Gen Z customers.

Conclusions

F1 fans are a loyal and dedicated breed, and have stuck by the world championship despite price rises

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Change is generally constant and F1, with its regular rule alterations and design refreshments, embodies this very well. It is up to the individual to decide whether the information we have presented is good, bad or the same as it was nearly a decade on from 2015.

Given the current cost of living crisis and recent controversies about dynamic pricing – infamously in the UK involving the band Oasis, plus those memories of Silverstone’s 2022-23 saga – the relevant price rises we’ve noted will stand out. This is especially important for anyone considering buying multiple tickets or pieces of merchandise to fulfil a family pastime.

Motorsport has always been an expensive pursuit for its protagonists. But, while we must recognise how specific changes to things we consume are reflected from trends in wider society, F1, as the top category, has to take care to avoid upsetting its long-standing fans when it comes to cost. Although these days it provides a much increased offering for consuming its action and stories, it can’t risk losing the emotional touches that truly mean so much to its fans, and ever-rising prices would surely do just this.

And if the biggest change we’ve highlighted shows how many ways it’s now possible to be an F1 fan, these supporters also have far more ways than simply voting with their feet and not attending specific races. The impact of many wider changes now ultimately comes with a bottom line for the championship. Through all that, it should never lose the critical, historical connections that got it to this point in the first place.

It is crucial that F1 does not lose sight of the fans as its ceaseless expansion continues

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images