F1 online conversation peaked in 2022. It is now falling, and the cause is not the sport losing its appeal but one team winning everything.
- January to May 2023 against the same window in 2022: mentions down 70.2%, new followers down 46.3%, social reach down 64.1%.
- Words like “boring” and “annoying” rose sharply while “interesting” and “exciting” fell.
- Buzz Radar’s predictive models estimated F1 could lose up to 50% of the audience it gained in the Liberty Media era by 2024 if one driver kept dominating.
- The offsetting finding: fans who stayed are far more passionate. Positive conversation rose from 19% to 46% between 2016 and 2023.
- Across ten years of data, the single best predictor of F1 conversation volume is how close the championship is.
We are Buzz Radar, a social intelligence company. We take the sea of online data created by social media and use it to help organisations understand their audiences.
As F1 fans, we started collecting every publicly available social media post about Formula 1 in 2013, to develop and train our insight platform. Ten years later that is one of the largest databases of F1 social data ever created: 77.6 million online conversations and 247,000 analysed accounts. This is the first of three reports in which our analysts, working alongside our AI, put that data to work on the questions that matter to fans, teams and sponsors.
The first question: have we reached peak F1?
How did F1 grow so quickly after 2016?
Liberty Media inherited a sport with an ageing audience and turned it into the fastest-growing social property in world sport.
In 2016 F1 was stagnating. Bernie Ecclestone had held the commercial rights for almost 40 years and had built a billion-dollar business, but outdated broadcasting practices and neglect of younger demographics were costing the sport fans. Following the sale to Liberty Media in 2017, four things landed at once: a serious social and digital content strategy, the loosening of content restrictions for teams and drivers, the success of Netflix’s Drive to Survive, and a generation of young drivers arriving just as COVID-19 lockdowns gave people time to watch.
Conversation climbed steadily from 2019 into the first half of 2022. The single biggest day of F1 social conversation in the entire dataset remains the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Collisions, close championships and shock wins pushed F1 into mainstream conversation and pulled new fans in, while lapsed fans from traditional fanbases such as the Tifosi rejoined whenever Ferrari won.
How does F1’s growth compare with other sports?
Fifth most discussed league in the world, first in motorsport, from the fewest events of any sport in the top five.
Source: Buzz Radar analysis of online conversation volume, 2016 against 2022.
F1 held fifth place among the world’s most discussed sporting leagues from 2016 to 2022, and first among motorsports. It did that on 22 race weekends in 2022, against 285 NFL matches including the Super Bowl. On conversation generated per event, nothing else in the top five comes close.
Followers tell the same story. F1’s social following grew every year after the Liberty takeover, with 2018 the only year growth slowed and 2021 the peak, adding roughly 14 million cross-channel followers in a single year. No other major sport grew its social channels faster in the period.
Have we reached peak F1?
Every popularity metric we track turned negative in 2023.
Yes. From the end of the 2021 season through the start of 2022, F1 broke records across social, digital and television. The first half of the 2023 season reversed all of it. Mentions, new followers and reach all fell hard against 2022, and they fell together, which rules out a platform-specific explanation.
| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mentions of F1 | 3.19M +74.3% | 6.14M +92.5% | 1.83M −70.2% |
| New followers, key accounts | 624.27K +250.2% | 911.15K +46.0% | 489.37K −46.3% |
| Social reach | 35.63B +74.8% | 61.73B +73.3% | 22.16B −64.1% |
X/Twitter data. Percentage changes are against the same January to May window in the previous year.
What is the language of F1 fans telling us?
Boredom and annoyance rose sharply. Interest and excitement fell.
Volume is only half the signal. We ran machine-learning tone detection across every F1 post in 2022 and 2023 to see how people were describing the sport. Negative descriptors climbed steeply while the positive ones that had defined the 2021 and 2022 seasons dropped away. Terms including “not good”, “disappointing”, “boring”, “disgrace” and “annoying” all rose. “Interesting”, “exciting” and “fun” all fell. The largest single contributor in the conversation analysis was the dominance of Max Verstappen and Red Bull, with fans describing outcomes as predictable and races as boring.
“Idk man, F1 just doesn’t feel the same anymore. I watched every race of the Mercedes-domination era religiously, but there’s something about this season which isn’t very compelling. Maybe I’m just talking nonsense, but it feels like there’s nothing at stake.”@Kidslovef1_YT30 April 2023 · 30.9K views
“Repeated dominance of one team is one of the most important things in making a year of F1 boring or not. If there’s a fight at the front, it’s almost always good to watch.”PaulForum post, 27 February 2023
“Verstappen is about to do me a service by causing me to stop watching F1 and freeing up my weekend mornings.”chkltcowForum post, 31 July 2023
Is this about F1, or about one team winning?
Ten years of data say it is the championship margin, not the sport.
The closer the competition, the more people talk about F1. 2016 was the most talked-about season in the dataset until 2021, before the Liberty takeover, before Drive to Survive and before lockdown, because Rosberg and Hamilton were separated by five points. Conversation stagnated between 2018 and 2020 while Hamilton dominated, and Hamilton’s most dominant season carried a 25% drop in conversation. It grew sharply again in 2021, the closest championship since 2016 and the second season decided at the final race, ending with 155 million mentions.
2022 rode the wave of that finish, with fans still discussing 2021 while a new generation of cars arrived. 2023 is the result of single-driver dominance returning, and on our modelling the pattern holds until the racing closes up again.
If F1 continues to be dominated by one driver and one team, it will lose much of the new audience gained in the Liberty era.
Is there any good news in the data?
The fans who remain are far more passionate than the fanbase F1 had a decade ago.
Traditionally F1’s fanbase was interested in the technical and factual side of the sport, which produced mostly neutral conversation. The rise in popularity of individual drivers and teams changed that. Neutral commentary collapsed and opinion took its place, overwhelmingly on the positive side.
Source: Buzz Radar tone analysis of F1 social conversation, January to March 2016 and January to March 2023.
Positive conversation rose 27 percentage points while negative conversation rose only one. F1 has a smaller, louder, more invested audience than it had in 2016, which is a better commercial base than a large indifferent one. The risk is what happens to that passion when the racing stays predictable.
How has support across the grid changed?
Fandom now runs the length of the paddock rather than clustering around Ferrari.
Conversation for all teams has converged. The spread between the most and least talked-about team was 34 percentage points in 2017 and 22 in 2022, a relative reduction of 35%. Ferrari generated over a third of all team conversation in 2017 and sat second to Red Bull in 2022. At the other end of the grid, Haas grew its share of conversation tenfold.
| Team | Change in share (percentage points) |
|---|---|
| Red Bull Racing | +14 |
| Haas F1 Team | +7 |
| Alpine | +3 |
| Aston Martin F1 | +2 |
| AlphaTauri | +1 |
| Alfa Romeo Racing | −1 |
| Williams Racing | −2 |
| Mercedes AMG F1 | −4 |
| McLaren | −6 |
| Scuderia Ferrari | −12 |
Conversation still largely tracks on-track performance, but championship results alone do not explain the movement. Driver popularity and the strength of each team’s social content strategy account for much of the rest.
How we analysed F1 audiences
We collect F1 keywords and hashtags across social platforms, forums and blogs, clean the data and run algorithmic analysis to isolate relevant results. Our analysts then work with AI output across audience analysis, trend identification and pain point analysis to produce the findings and recommendations in these reports. Figures quoted as year-on-year comparisons use the same January to May window in each year unless stated otherwise.
This report was published in September 2023. Figures reflect data available at that time.
Frequently asked questions
Did Formula 1 peak in 2022?
On social data, yes. 2022 was the high point for F1 online conversation, followers and reach. Comparing January to May 2023 with the same period in 2022, mentions fell 70.2%, new followers for key accounts fell 46.3% and social reach fell 64.1%.
Why did F1 social conversation fall in 2023?
One-team dominance. Across a decade of data, F1 conversation tracks the closeness of the championship. Conversation stagnated between 2018 and 2020 while Hamilton dominated and grew sharply in 2021, the closest title fight since 2016.
How fast did F1 grow compared with other sports?
Between 2016 and 2022, F1 grew online conversation by 80%, beaten only by the Indian Premier League at 208% and the UEFA Champions League at 112%. It was the fifth most discussed sporting league in the world, from 22 race weekends against 285 NFL matches.
Are F1 fans becoming more negative?
Both positive and negative conversation grew at the expense of neutral commentary. In early 2016, 74% of conversation was neutral, 19% positive and 7% negative. By early 2023 it was 46% neutral, 46% positive and 8% negative. Fans are more opinionated in both directions.
How much F1 data does this report analyse?
77.6 million online conversations and 247,000 accounts, collected continuously since 2013 from social platforms, forums and blogs.
What would reverse the decline?
Closer racing. The two most talked-about seasons in the dataset, 2016 and 2021, were both decided at the final race.
Read the full report
The PDF version of “Have we reached peak F1?” includes the full chart set, the conversation timeline and our predictive modelling in detail.
- Part 1Have we reached peak F1?
- Part 2Does F1 need Drive to Survive?
- Part 3Has the F1 fanbase become more toxic?