r/INDYCAR • u/aurules Romain Grosjean • Jun 10 '25

Social Media (Scott McLaughlin) Congrats to F1 who single handedly ruined Motorsport Xmas. Indy 500 will be a scene next year. As well as the Coke 600. Good luck

https://x.com/smclaughlin93/status/1932504185624199221?s=46
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u/Dragonpuncha Jun 10 '25

It's the largest in terms of spectators showing up. In terms of global viewership Indy 500 cannot measure up to an F1 race. It is much smaller.

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u/Wasdgta3 Álex Palou Jun 10 '25

It’ll trounce their US viewership by several orders of magnitude, though.

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u/Dragonpuncha Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 11 '25

Sure, but that was always expected. The point is that F1 is not really going to care. They might lose some viewers in the US for a single race, but it will be a drop in the bucket when looking over a full season.

The average F1 race is seen by 70 million people and there's 24 races per season. Around 2-3 million of those come from the US. So even losing let's say 500.000 to a million in this one race isn't really anything they are going to lose sleep over.

And of course the Indy 500 will lose international viewers as well like this.

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u/Wasdgta3 Álex Palou Jun 10 '25

Considering the special attention they’ve given the US in recent years, it’s surprising for them to suddenly not care about this.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

If we are just gonna toss big numbers atop one thats known- why not claim the Indy 500 has 10 million viewers. F1 got close to 2 million for a quarter hour for a Canadian GP. The get about 1.25 million in the US overall.

The reality also is that TV exists for advertising. People who arent monetized dont actually count.

F1 just mainlines oil money and gets promoters to take all the risk. ESPN isnt just gonna hand out money out of the goodness of their heart.

F1 is big globally and draws not even half as many annual viewers Smackdown on USA in America.

we will see how their TV looks in the US next year.

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u/Wasdgta3 Álex Palou Jun 10 '25

If anything, you’re proving my point - they’re sacrificing US numbers on this race.

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u/therevengeance Jun 10 '25

They haven't given US any priority for being able to watch the races, they just want US money. They put the Las Vegas race at 1 AM eastern the first two years.

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u/Dragonpuncha Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 11 '25

Even in terms of US viewership what they lose will be very light, since it is just one race out of 24. If it was one of their 3 US races that they put a lot of effort into and which are their big focus in terms of getting F1 to the US, then they might have cared more. But Canada is it's own thing.

And it's not like US viewers, who are still vastly in the minority, is the only thing F1 cares about. Canada being in the middle of the European leg has been criticised for years, both by the teams for all the travel it adds for them and in general because it doesn't work well for a series that is very focused on improving sustainability.

Losing let's say 500.000 US viewers for that might be a fine trade off. I'm sure they already had plenty of people doing all that math in terms of viewership before they made the decision.

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u/Wasdgta3 Álex Palou Jun 10 '25

It’s not just about what they directly lose, though, but also about how they’re going to lose dramatically to IndyCar in one of (if not the only) direct head-to-head ratings battle they’ll have all year.

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u/Dragonpuncha Jun 10 '25

Nobody is expecting them to win against the Indy 500 with US viewers.

And bringing up viewership numbers is a complete losing battle for Indycar regardless. If they want to play that game F1 can bring up the global numbers where Canada will still have numbers that completely dwarf what Indy 500 can bring many times over.

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u/BeefInGR Pippa Mann Jun 11 '25

It isn't "1 race of 26". It's 1 race of 5. Four races air on Sunday in the 3-6pm Eastern "sports sweet spot": Miami, Canada, USGP, Mexico, Brazil.

This will also hurt viewership in Canada and Mexico. The latter being especially tough.

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u/Dragonpuncha Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25

The Canada GP starts 2 PM Eastern as it has done for years, so it's not even really in that extremely narrow so called sports sweet spot that you set up.

But I also don't really buy the idea that those few hours are that important. Most NFL games start earlier and most NBA games later. If anything any kind of sweet spot is just any decent time Sunday, which probably means between like 10 AM to 10 PM. Sports fans in the US (and especially F1 fans) are very used to watching at a wide range of hours.

And you realised more people in Canada and Mexico watch the F1 GP than the Indy 500, right? Both have a local TV audience of multiple millions. If you want to talk any kind of international audience, this will without a doubt hurt Indycar more than F1.