If you had told F1 ten years ago that its fastest‑growing audience would be young women, I’m not sure anyone in the paddock would have believed you.
Yet here we are. A sport once defined by engineering brilliance, tyre strategy and V6 turbo‑hybrids is now also defined by something far more universal: emotion, identity and culture.
Formula 1’s transformation from a male-dominated niche sport into a cultural phenomenon beloved by millions of women is one of the most instructive case studies in modern sports marketing, and the lessons reach well beyond the racetrack.
A decade ago, women accounted for roughly 8% of F1’s global fanbase. Today, that figure sits at around 42%, with 3 in 4 of those that have become a Formula 1 fan in the past year being women*. Women who once appeared only occasionally in the grandstands now fill entire sections, buy the merch, debate strategy, and follow every team principal press conference like it’s a season finale. These are not incremental shifts; they represent a fundamental redrawing of who the sport belongs to. This didn’t happen by accident. It happened because F1 rewrote the rules of how a sport can show up in people’s lives.
And while F1’s story is impressive on its own, it’s also a blueprint. A playbook. A masterclass in audience growth that almost every brand, sports or not, can learn from.
So, what exactly did F1 do right?
Drive to Survive wasn’t just a documentary. It was a reframe.
The single biggest lever F1 pulled was the Netflix series Drive to Survive. Rather than showcase technical brilliance and lap times, the show leant into human storytelling and character-driven narratives, rivalries, pressure, ambition, failure, redemption. It made the people behind the helmets visible and human, it let people meet the drivers before asking them to care about the racing.
Humans build attachment to people faster than to products or concepts, F1 simply switched the entry point. Emotion first, information later. For audiences who had never considered themselves motorsport fans, it provided a compelling entry point.
Drive to Survive has now accumulated over 700 million viewers worldwide, and almost half its recent UK audience was female. New fans, many of them women weren’t coming for the engineering. They were coming for the drama. And they stayed for the racing. So if you want new audiences, start with stories and people … an emotional hook. The technicalities can come later.
When Liberty Media took over, one of the smartest (and perhaps least flashy) decisions was removing the sport’s tight control over content. Drivers could actually show their lives. Teams could post behind‑the‑scenes chaos. Fans react and create.
An explosion of behind-the-scenes material meant that the sport suddenly existed where new fans, especially women and Gen Z already lived: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Female content creators became teachers, translators of the sport, and community builders by making F1 accessible and fun for newcomers. Formula1.com saw a 73% increase in unique female visitors in a single year, with the 25–34 age group growing by 670%. These numbers don’t happen by accident, they happen when a sport meets new audiences where they already are.
To create a diverse audience, loosen your grip and let them shape the story too.
F1 made a series of deliberate moves to signal that women were not guests in the sport, they were part of it. The ending of grid girls, the launch of F1 Academy (an all-female racing series now backed by all ten F1 teams), and growing female representation across engineering, media and management all sent the same message: this sport is for you too. These moves weren’t tokenistic. They signalled, very clearly; you’re not guests here, you’re part of this.
Inclusivity at the structural level helped legitimise inclusivity in the fanbase, and the fanbase responded. And fans responded. When you change who belongs internally, it changes who feels they belong externally. For brands, inclusivity can’t just be in campaigns; it has to be in the foundations.
F1 stopped thinking of itself purely as a sport and embraced being a lifestyle and entertainment brand.
F1 understood that fandom is not built by broadcast rights alone. As the sport embedded itself into fashion, beauty, luxury and lifestyle culture through partnerships with major brands and the glamour of showcase events, it became something people wanted to be associated with, not just watch.
Miami brought festival energy, Las Vegas delivered full spectacle with a Hollywood‑level launch, and celebrity attendance became part of the storytelling rather than a sideshow.
In 2025, F1 even televised its 75‑year anniversary car reveal like a global product launch, a moment engineered to feel culturally significant, not just operationally necessary. This wasn’t accidental. It was cultural strategy.
Research shows that female F1 fans are significantly more likely than average to browse beauty and fashion sites. They are lifestyle consumers as much as sports fans, and F1 gave them multiple routes into the world of the sport. The female fanbase wasn’t just watching races, they were buying into an aesthetic, an identity, and a lifestyle. Identity‑driven industries grow fastest when they let culture expand the product.
Perhaps most importantly, F1 did not expect new fans to arrive as experts, they created explainer content. Beginner‑friendly broadcasts, built emotional attachment before technical knowledge, and created community spaces, digital and physical where newer fans could find their footing. Social media formats that answered “stupid” questions (that weren’t stupid at all). They encouraged community, both online and in the paddock.
The result is a fanbase in which 90% report being emotionally invested in race outcomes, and 61% engage with F1 content every single day*. Awareness became interest. Interest became attachment. Attachment became identity. That is the fan journey working exactly as it should.
F1 doesn’t just capture attention during race weekends; it fills the gaps in between. This ‘always-on’ fan ecosystem is something brands can underestimate.
We can’t talk about F1’s surge in female fans without acknowledging how profoundly the US market reshaped the sport. Liberty Media didn’t just modernise F1, they Americanised the entertainment strategy.
The US is now F1’s biggest growth market, and with nearly half of Gen Z fans identifying as female, it’s become one of the most female‑driven markets in the sport’s global expansion (Formula1.com).
More races in the US, bigger production values and a storytelling style that leaned into theatre, personalities, and hype.
The Las Vegas race in particular felt like the moment F1 declared it was no longer just a motorsport, it was a global entertainment franchise. And Gen Z women amplified this transformation. The spectacle wasn’t about vanity, it was about resetting expectations of what a race weekend can mean.
They meme‑ified drivers, built parasocial relationships, turned radio messages into catchphrases, and normalised being emotionally invested in athletes they’d never watched race pre‑Netflix.
New audiences won’t engage in the same way legacy audiences do, and that’s not a threat, it’s a growth multiplier.
So, what does this all mean? What F1 shows us is that audience growth isn’t accidental, it’s engineered. And it’s engineered by understanding the motivations behind why people choose to care.
*Data from Formula 1 and Motorsport Network’s 2015 & 2025 Global F1 Fan Surveys
F1’s success is more than a sports story, it is a masterclass in audience development, a roadmap for brands trying to build audience, relevance, and cultural heat, but executing that kind of transformation requires deep insight into how audiences think, feel, and behave at each stage of their relationship with a sport or entertainment property.
At RED C, this is our world. Sports and entertainment fandom is one of our core specialisms. We help rights holders, broadcasters, brands and sponsors understand not just who their audiences are today, but how to guide them along the fan journey from initial awareness through to deep, identity level committed fandom.
We map the moments that matter, the barriers that stall, and the triggers that accelerate attachment and deepen loyalty. We blend behavioural insight with cultural understanding through qualitative depth with quantitative scale to deliver insight that is not just interesting, but genuinely actionable.
Our clients don’t just reach audiences; they resonate with them. Because whether you’re a sport, a brand or an entertainment property, the lesson is the same:
You don’t grow by shouting louder. You grow by understanding what your audience needs next.
https://redcresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Authenticity-in-Womens-Sports.pdf
If you are thinking about how to grow your audience, or better understand the one you already have, we would love to talk.
Get in touch: [email protected] | redcresearch.com
If you enjoyed the article, check out this overview of our work looking at Authenticity in Women’s Sports and get in touch for a complimentary presentation of the full report.
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