Newsletter from May 8, 2026

How F1 Became BIGGER than ever! 🏎️

and what I learned from the CEO of F1.

Benjamin Diedering

sent: May 8, 2026

Subject: How F1 Became BIGGER than ever! 🏎️

Formula 1 in America: Why it finally clicked

Maybe you’ve seen the rise of F1 in the last couple years, but today I want to break down why it happened.

Formula 1 didn’t conquer America overnight. It took decades of wrong turns, missed opportunities, and one Netflix series to finally crack it open.

And Miami in 2026 is the clearest proof yet that the sport has fully arrived… not just as a race, but as a cultural moment that brands, marketers, and business people can’t afford to ignore.

Here’s what happened this weekend, why it matters, and what you can actually take from it.

The Long Road to America

To understand what Miami means, you have to understand where F1 came from.

For most of its history, Formula 1 was a European sport with a global following, everywhere except the United States.

The cars were the fastest on earth. The rivalries were legendary.
Senna versus Prost. Schumacher chasing five consecutive championships. Racing at speeds that made the whole thing feel borderline reckless… yet America looked the other way.

The main issue wasn’t the sport, rather it was the storytelling. F1 was broadcast on television, but produced for people who already knew what they were watching:

Lap times
Technical breakdowns
Insider commentary

However, the human stories, feuds, and personalities were buried underneath the engineering. The sport never tried to earn casual audiences, until Netflix showed up.

The Show That Changed Everything

In 2019, Formula 1 partnered with Netflix to produce Drive to Survive — a behind-the-scenes docuseries following teams, drivers, and the drama of an entire season. It wasn’t just a popular show. It was a full reintroduction of the sport to an audience that had never given it a second look.

Drive to Survive made you care about more than just the race. It turned drivers into characters, built rivalries into a drama series, and put cameras in places nobody expected.

The American audience responded immediately. ESPN viewership surged. A younger, more diverse fanbase emerged. Out of F1’s 800 million global viewers, only 52 million are in the United States. F1’s own leadership has said publicly they’re “not really scratching the surface” in the US market.

Smart Brands Are Paying Attention to F1

F1’s audience transformation didn’t just create new fans. It created one of the most commercially valuable demographics in live sports: young, affluent, globally minded, and highly engaged.

Brands noticed this and the ones moving fastest aren’t just slapping logos on the cars. They’re building experiences inside the culture itself.

The first thing to understand is the scale of what brands are working with here. F1 Miami is not a race weekend, it’s a five-day cultural event that happens to have a race at its center. The Fan Fest alone at Ocean Drive draws tens of thousands of people who never set foot inside the track. That’s a captive, lifestyle-oriented audience that brands can reach without a racing ticket. Smart marketers figured this out early.

The partnership play: Jack Daniel’s and McLaren built Jack’s Garage, a trackside concert venue inside the circuit itself, featuring Shaboozey and Loud Luxury across the weekend. Co-hosting an experience with one of the most culturally relevant teams in F1, for an audience that is already primed and present.
The lifestyle play: Aston Martin and Celsius built a Wednesday night 5K run through Bayfront and downtown Miami. A live DJ, an F1 car on display, Strava integration, racing simulators, and co-branded swag. This is a brand that sells energy drinks activating inside a sport with a performance-obsessed audience. The product fits the room perfectly.
The fashion play: Ferrari’s chief brand officer said it publicly this year: “Formula 1 is the next red carpet.” That framing is deliberate. YSL dressed Lewis Hamilton and paddock guests. Tommy Hilfiger dropped a Miami-inspired capsule with the Cadillac F1 Team. Adidas launched its first ever race-specific collection with Audi’s new F1 entry. Psycho Bunny held an on-site pop-up and outfitted the Hard Rock Beach Club staff. Brioni became Alpine’s official formalwear partner for the season.

What separates the brands getting real ROI from this versus the ones just buying visibility is the depth of integration. F1’s audience in Miami is loyal, affluent, and highly engaged. Showing up matters. But showing up in a way that actually fits the energy of what F1 has become: young, fast, culturally sharp.

The Bigger Picture

F1 figured out something that most legacy properties never do: it found its lost audience not by changing the sport, but by changing how it told the story.

Drive to Survive gave the sport a second chance to introduce itself and led with the human element.

The result is a sport that now has one of the most commercially valuable audiences in global entertainment. Brands that understood this early locked in. The ones figuring it out now are playing catch up.

My friend Derek Chan put it well when we were talking at last year’s Vegas Grand Prix: the most underrated part of what F1 has built is how the event creates multiple entry points for different audiences.

The hardcore racing fan, the lifestyle attendee, the brand marketer, the first-timer who got into it through Netflix three seasons ago. They’re all there and they’re all spending.

That’s not an accident. That’s the result of a sport that spent decades losing its audience and then figured out exactly what it took to get them back.

What’s Hot

BDX Sports Marketing Summit: With special speakers from Tampa Bay Buccaneers, HYROX and more.
Adidas’s new star studded World Cup promo.
Target goes all in on creator commerce: Read about why Target is making this move.
The BIG business of marathons: How can brands stand out in an emerging market?

Thanks for reading this week’s letter! See you in the next one.

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