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Apple had a box-office hit with “F1,” the car-racing movie. Now it looks like it’s going to double up on the sport, with a likely deal to stream Formula 1 races.
The tech company appears to be the leading bidder for the US rights to show F1 races. The rights are currently held by Disney’s ESPN.
Apple has submitted a bid worth at least $150 million a year to stream the races starting in 2026. And ESPN isn’t going to try to match or beat that, according to a source familiar with negotiations.
So barring a last-minute change, it looks like Apple, which already has deals to stream some pro baseball games, and all of Major League Soccer’s games, will have a third sports streaming offering next year.
Reps for Apple and ESPN declined to comment. I’ve asked F1, as well as its owner, Liberty Media Group, for comment. The Financial Times previously reported Apple’s interest in F1; Puck previously reported the size of the bid.
Formula 1 has traditionally been very popular outside the US, and more or less unknown inside America. That started to change with the debut of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” docuseries about the sport in 2019, and now ESPN says the average F1 race generates about 1.3 million viewers — more than double what it was doing in 2018.
But ESPN, which was reportedly paying around $85 million a year for its current F1 rights, appears to have concluded that it can spend its money more effectively elsewhere. It’s also notable that Netflix, which looked at F1 rights back in 2022 (when it was still insisting it wasn’t interested in streaming sports, which is no longer true), doesn’t seem to have bid aggressively this time around. Interest from other suitors was also reportedly muted.
Meanwhile Apple, which doesn’t seem to worry about spending when it comes to its media projects, continues to dabble in pro sports. But it has yet to invest in rights for the NFL — by far, the most popular programming on American TV, full stop.
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