Brad Pitt‘s F1 Movie Opens to $55.6M as Liberty Eyes New Rights Pact

Yahoo

9 hours ago

As Formula 1 continues to have discussions about the future of its U.S. media rights, the racing property is hoping the strong opening for a new feature film starring Brad Pitt may be just the thing to help push those talks over the finish line.
F1: The Movie took in some $55.6 million in its domestic rollout, which is quite a haul for a non-sequel, adult-oriented film that isn't constructed around superhero IP. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the Apple Original Films offering stars the septuagenarian Pitt in the unlikely role as a washed-up racer who breaks back onto the circuit after a 30-year layoff.
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The film booked another $88.4 million overseas, although it will have to generate a much greater windfall if it is to earn back an estimated $300 million in production and marketing expenses. The stateside summer release calendar may put the kibosh on a profit, however, as this weekend marks the launch of yet another Jurassic Park sequel—the seventh release in the series arrives on the heels of 2022's $1 billion blockbuster Jurassic World: Dominion—while Warner Bros.' Superman hits the multiplex on July 11.
If the F1 flick continues to draw a crowd here in the U.S., that enthusiasm could spill over to the televised racing product. While ABC's broadcast of the Miami Grand Prix delivered the third-largest domestic F1 audience with 2.17 million viewers, that marked a 29% decline from the year-ago race (3.07 million), which was boosted by a lead-in from Game 7 of the Magic-Cavaliers NBA playoff series (4.32 million).
Oscar Piastri's win in Miami also trailed a competing NASCAR Cup Series race on FS1, a basic-cable network that reaches approximately 30 million fewer homes than ABC. Despite the relatively restricted delivery system, the May 4 race at Texas Motor Superspeedway averaged 2.56 million viewers.
As much as F1 ratings zoomed to previously unimagined heights during its first few years as a Disney media partner, the TV growth effectively maxed out in 2022, when ESPN and its broadcast sibling averaged 1.21 million viewers per race. The following year saw F1's deliveries slip 8.5% to 1.11 million viewers, an average delivery that carried over to the 2024 season. By way of comparison, NASCAR served up 2.9 million viewers per race over the course of its two most recent seasons.
The fact that NASCAR draws an audience that is two-and-a-half times the size of the F1 crowd likely goes a long way toward explaining why the latter group is getting pushback in its talks with prospective media partners. F1's parent company, Liberty Media, is looking to double the value of its current $90 million/year deal with Disney, and that big ask has prompted the Mouse House to allow its exclusive negotiating window to lapse without a renewal. (ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro has demonstrated his unwillingness to overpay for even a Big Four league, opting out of the final two years of the company's legacy $550 million/year MLB deal in February.)
While Apple is among the list of digital disruptors said to be kicking the tires on an F1 rights pact, a paywall will all but certainly prevent F1 from achieving the sort of rapid growth it enjoyed on cable and broadcast TV. (Disney's ratings nearly doubled between 2018, the first year of its F1 stewardship, and 2022.) As illustrated by the 10-year, $2.5 billion Apple-MLS deal, all the money in the world can't buy a bigger audience when fans have to shell out $99.99 for a season pass.
F1 still has plenty of time to work out the particulars of a new U.S. rights deal (its ESPN contract expires when the 2025 season runs out in December), and there's an outside chance enthusiasm for the feature film might help boost the televised product just as the talks start heating up. ESPN will carry three F1 races between now and early August, with the British Grand Prix set to roar into view on July 6.
The 2024 race averaged 1.29 million viewers, which should provide a solid baseline for any post-theatrical comparisons when the holiday-delayed official Nielsen data for this year's event drops on July 9.
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