Formula 1 News: F1 surpasses $2 billion in annual sponsorship

Formula 1 accrued $2.04 billion in sponsorship revenue across the 2024 season, taking it one step closer to dethroning the NFL as the highest-grossing sport globally.

Formula 1 is now second only to the NFL, which has revenue of $2.5 billion annually.

Ever since Liberty Media’s acquisition of the commercial rights to the sport in 2017, F1 has seen a meteoric rise in terms of popularity, especially in the American markets.

When you have over 80 million TV viewers per race like F1 does, sponsors fall over themselves wanting a piece of the action.

As a result, the sport’s soaring popularity reached new heights as it breached the $2bn sponsorship mark for the first time in its history in 2024, only outdone by the NFL and dwarfing NASCAR, IndyCar and IMSA combined.

An independent report released by SponsorUnited showed receipts of $2.04bn for F1 and its teams during the course of the 2024 season. This catapulted the sport over the likes of established giants such as the MLB, NBA and NHL, which have historically had the legs over F1 in terms of their lucrativeness in the global sponsorship market.

Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff has credited Liberty Media and the Americanization of F1.

“The attraction changed when Liberty bought the sport. Bernie [Ecclestone] led the sport for more than 40 years and made it big. But when it changed hands, the new owners pushed it up to completely new levels — the American way of looking at sports from an entertainment perspective,” he told the Financial Times.