Zak Brown says TV is F1's next US growth fight

McLaren CEO Zak Brown said Formula 1’s biggest remaining growth opportunity in the United States is not adding more races, but turning its rising popularity into much bigger television audiences.

Speaking to media including RacingNews365, Brown said the next area F1 needs to crack in America is simple: “I think it’s going to be TV ratings.” He argued that, for all the championship’s momentum in the market, its at-home audience still has far more room to grow than its event footprint. “TV ratings are still relatively small compared to the NFLs of the world,” Brown said. “I think that’s the biggest area of growth, getting the TV ratings up.”

That view is notable because Brown does not believe the United States has reached its limit as a race-hosting market. He said F1 could “definitely support four and five” grands prix in the country, beyond its current permanent roster of Miami, Austin and Las Vegas. But he made clear that adding more American rounds is not where he thinks the series should push next.

Instead, Brown said more expansion in the US would come “at the cost of other markets” that F1 still needs to enter. He said he was “happy where we are” with three races and pointed to other potential growth areas such as South Africa and Korea. In racing terms, that frames the American question differently: not whether F1 can stage more events there, but whether it can deepen its reach with the audience it has already spent years building.

That matters because Formula 1 has already established a substantial presence in the US. The championship now has three permanent races on the calendar and has signed a five-year American broadcast deal with Apple reportedly worth about $750 million. Trackside interest has risen sharply in recent years, but Brown’s comments underline that packed grandstands do not automatically mean F1 has fully broken through in the wider sports market.

The television numbers show both progress and the gap that still remains. Last year, ESPN reported an all-time single-season Formula 1 viewership record in the United States, averaging 1.3 million viewers per race. That is a meaningful benchmark for the series and evidence that its American audience is moving forward. At the same time, Brown’s comparison with the NFL shows why he sees television, rather than calendar expansion, as the next battleground.

The shift Brown is pointing to is from presence to penetration. F1 already has multiple races, major promoters and a national broadcast platform in the United States. The next test is whether it can turn that foundation into consistently larger weekly audiences, because that is where the series’ long-term commercial and competitive standing in the American sports landscape will be judged.