Brad Pitt's F1 racing movie debuts. Can it help bring the sport to new heights?

Yahoo

6 hours ago

It's a huge week for Formula One, but the action isn't on the racetrack.
'F1 The Movie' premiered in the US this Friday, June 27. The blockbuster with a rumored $200 million production budget backed by Apple (AAPL) and distributed by Warner Bros. (WBD) aims for glory in the highly competitive summer release calendar. The movie is tracking well for a strong opening box office, per Hollywood insiders.
The film is based on a tried-but-true formula (forgive the pun). Fictional aging racer Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is brought on to an upstart team to help guide its rookie driver, but along the way he comes face to face with his own personal demons, and of course redemption.
But that's the boring part. What has everyone, or at least car buffs, salivating is the access the filmmakers had to the sport: filming at real races using real F1 cars and technology, embedding themselves in the sport, and capturing footage that brings the viewer right into the driver's seat.
A movie like this, especially with a big focus on the US audience, would have been a surprise only a few years ago.
Part of this is because F1 — considered the most technically advanced, and glamorous, racing league — is finally growing in the US. In 2024, the sport reached about 30 million viewers across ESPN (DIS) platforms, with an average of 1.1 million viewers per race during the season. That's pretty good for a sport that used to count viewers in the thousands less than ten years ago.
US fans, who discovered the sport and grew with it as shows like Netflix's (NFLX) 'Drive to Survive' brought drivers into viewers' living rooms, have become a coveted group to market. That's both for the sport, which is owned by Liberty Media (FWONK), and the many brands that have now signed on as sponsors.
'[The F1] fanbase across the world is over 800 million; fanbase in the US is 50 million. But the really important thing is doubling year on year,' said James Vowles, the head of Williams F1 and a former longtime Mercedes team exec. 'So great trajectory commercially, and if we look at all of the partners and sponsors that we have, a third of them are from the US, which just tells you how important it is.'
Moviegoers, from the hardcore F1 fans to those who just want to see Brad Pitt drive a race car, will be most impressed by how close the filmmakers were to the sport in capturing the action.
'It's not a documentary, but it is authentic to us as a sport,' Vowles said. '[Producer] Jerry [Bruckheimer], [director] Joe [Kosinski], and the team were really, really impressive at integrating themselves across [the last two seasons], such that as far as I went, we had an 11th team alongside us. It was really seamless in terms of integration.'
The F1 movie team had its own F1 race cars, fictional team personnel, and even pit setups to replicate the 11th team on the real F1 grid. Apple created special cameras that were embedded in the race cars to capture all the action.
The realism is an important aspect of the movie, and portraying it effectively is good for the brand, Vowles said.
'I think what we've done really well, and it's a combination of Liberty, combination of Netflix and I think the Formula 1 film as well, is actually portraying how much of a team sport it is, how much we got 1000 people behind the scenes working every hour they can to develop the car, every single race to be different,' Vowles said.
Plenty of large US multinational companies have bought into the F1 story via team sponsorships —including Oracle (ORCL), Visa (V), Walmart (WMT), HP (HPQ), and Alphabet's Google (GOOG) among them. Williams counts US brands like Duracell batteries (BRK-B), Michelob Ultra beer (BUD), and crypto exchange Kraken (KRAK.PVT), among others, as sponsors, and US-based investment firm Dorilton Capital is Williams's majority owner.
Now Williams itself would like to see more brands — US or otherwise — join its sponsorship ranks. Title sponsorships, like Williams' Atlassian deal, can for the most successful teams result in $20 million or more in revenue.
Williams had a strong 2024, but has had mixed results this year, sitting fifth in the team standings. Poor results mean less shared revenue, which in 2024 was split among the teams from a pool of $1.23 billion, with the higher-performing teams getting more money. Poor results also mean less money from sponsors.
There's also the concern that the sport of F1 has been stretched too far in the US, with newer fans harder to come by. ESPN has reportedly opted out of its TV rights deal with F1, with Liberty Media seeking a new deal worth upwards of $150 million per season, nearly double the current TV deal.
Streamers like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple may step in, betting on future growth.
As for Vowles, who just inked a new deal to run the team, he believes Williams is a 'sleeping giant" in F1 despite this year's struggles, citing the team's winning history of nine world championships and seven drivers championships, new investments, and strong drivers like Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon.
Whether Williams, now competing in its 48th season, can get back to its winning ways is an open question. The hope is that Brad Pitt's aging racer seeking redemption in "F1 The Movie" can lend a hand.
Pras Subramanian is the lead auto reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram.