The Miami GP Was Motorsport’s Super Bowl. Where Was F1 on Sunday?
A year’s worth of Americana focus and NFL partnerships fell flat at the 2024 Super Bowl
When Formula 1 touched down in Miami in 2022, the Grand Prix was deemed the elite motorsport series’ very own Super Bowl. For the last two years, the Hard Rock Stadium, home to the Miami Dolphins, has acted as F1’s pop-up paddock over the first weekend in May, complete with drivers braving the Florida heat in turquoise National Football League jerseys and using footballs as race day accessories.
With the Las Vegas Grand Prix joining F1’s U.S. calendar in 2023 — predating the Super Bowl by just three months — plus a checklist of partnerships between the two sporting giants, the 58th Super Bowl seemed primed for a splashy F1 promo show.
But advertising for the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix was absent, at least on TV. There was no mention of motorsport.
It seemed odd. While the shared location and Las Vegas’ emergence as a sports mecca spelled out the perfect opportunity for F1’s slanted and slit logo to grace the sidelines of Allegiant Stadium or half-time ads, it didn’t. A year’s worth of F1 spreading further across the U.S., amplified by driver-player investment opportunities, jersey swaps and paddock visits, made the Super Bowl feel like the place for a message of intent for upcoming business ventures.
As
’s Substack article “Trying Not to Fumble: How Formula 1 took a page from the NFL’s PR playbook” outlined, when Liberty Media bought F1 in 2017, it built a business model using the same strategy behind the American football league.American football, in Liberty Media’s eyes, was unpredictable. Any team could show up on “any given Sunday” to win a game or even a Super Bowl.
By comparison, only three constructors had won world championships in F1 during that same 10-year span. At the end of the 2016 season, MRT Mercedes left the sport, unable to find a new buyer for the team, and Force India and Williams both struggled to turn profits. What’s more, ahead of the 2017 season, Vice reported that United Kingdom viewership of F1 had fallen to a 12-year low of 390 million viewers.
The two sporting industry giants are in the constant throes of preserving and evolving their brands internationally.
They’ve also demonstrated an interest in building a relationship beyond taking pages from PR playbooks. The mingling of the two sports, from athletes investing in teams to sharing venues, goes beyond wanting to build a mutual audience and overcome respective slumps with each other’s help.
Rather than competing, the two have shown that being pals is mutually beneficial.
Las Vegas agrees. Nevada reached an unprecedented $15.5 billion in sports betting revenue in 2023, while the 2024 Super Bowl hit an all-time betting record with sports casino companies filling many of the $7 million 30-second ad slots and generating $23.1 billion in total game bets, according to ESPN.
Vegas had a profitable three months. Both the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix and the 2024 Super Bowl exceeded the economic impact generated from a year’s worth of sporting events hosted in “Sin City” between 2021 and 2022, according to the University of Nevada Las Vegas Lee Business School. November’s race brought in $100 million in tax revenue and a total economic impact of $1.2 billion, according to The Athletic. The Super Bowl, estimated to bring in $600 million, was anticipated to have an economic impact closer to $700 million or $800 million, reported CNN Business.
Location-specific ties aside, F1 teams are increasingly getting cozy with NFL players as they set their sights on gaining the favor of U.S. fans.
Alpine F1 Team offered a new investment model for athletes and celebrities last year when Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce — winners of Sunday’s Super Bowl — bought into the F1 team. Other investors, led by Wrexham A.F.C owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, include European and PGA Tour golfer Rory McIlroy, boxer Anthony Joshua and professional soccer players Trent Alexander-Arnold and Juan Mata.
In the lead-up to Sunday, Visa Cash App RB (formerly AlphaTauri) was the only team on the ground in Las Vegas to capitalize on the event. The team held its 2024 car unveiling ceremony not far from the stadium, complete with a Kendrick Lamar performance and a guest list boasting the Baltimore Ravens’ Odell Beckham Jr., Daniel Ricciardo’s close friend Josh Allen who plays for the Buffalo Bills, the New York Giants’ Saquon Barkley and the Detroit Lions’ Jahmyr Gibbs. F1 drivers Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda, along with F1 Academy driver Amna Al Qubaisi, took to social media to answer football questions ahead of the Super Bowl.
Come game day, motorsport representation came in the form of F1 presenter and content creator Lissie Mackintosh. Pairing up with NFL UK, a part of the 2024 International Games which brings pro ball games to countries outside of the U.S., Mackintosh promoted the Super Bowl on social media, but there seemed to be little mention of the elite racing series.
On the social media side, F1 teams, drivers and influencers practically led their own broadcast of the Super Bowl. Alpine’s Instagram account, along with the F1, Red Bull Racing and other official team accounts, promoted the big game.
Resurfaced videos of Red Bull’s 2017 lineup playing American football led to viral posts and reactions, like one user’s top-liked comment “‘Who is your favorite NFL player?’ Max Verstappen.”
Despite a flood of football content, F1 fans on social media noticed the racing series’ absence in the broadcast.
Rather than boost a half-time ad or dissect Las Vegas Grand Prix promo — marketing opportunities that seemed to be served on a silver platter to the motorsport series — fans took matters into their own hands and searched the stands for any F1 A-listers or motorsport-adjacent material to post about.
As eagle-eyed X (formerly Twitter) users spotted, a Ferrari jacket — matching the sea of red yet distinctly not football-related — among the crowded stands was about as much promo F1 received during game coverage.
It seemed that F1 fans were determined to promote the cross-sport relationship even if the broadcast promo was as minor as a speck of Ferrari red.
In an age where social media reigns supreme, Super Bowl ads both defy TV’s marketing decline while being only as effective as their social media viral potential. This year, the game broke TV viewership records with 123.4 million viewers, just shy of the 1969 Moon landing broadcast, according to CNN Business. The Hashtag #superbowllviii amassed around the same views, with 125.2 million users watching content from the game on TikTok.
The top-watched F1 race, in contrast, was the 2022 Miami Grand Prix, with a measly 2.6 million viewers. And when it comes to turning viewership and advertising advertising into fan dollars, F1 has some learning to do. As Joe Pompliano tweeted in 2021, “The Formula 1 and Super Bowl advertisement comparison illustrates the revenue multiple on a per-fan basis. The NFL has fewer fans but makes significantly more off of each of them than F1, despite F1 traditionally having a wealthier fan base.”
A lack of sponsor crossover could have contributed to the missing F1 promotion. Some of the most famous previous Super Bowl advertisers were nowhere to be seen this year, like GoDaddy’s ads featuring Danica Patrick, an F1 commentator and former professional racing driver. Another reason could come down to different media rights deals. Although F1 and the NFL seem to be joined at the hip nowadays, CBS held the rights for the Super Bowl while ESPN and ABC covered the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Maybe shelling out millions for a Super Bowl ad just wasn’t worth the investment for F1. After all, the series doesn’t seem to need the NFL’s help when it comes to generating economic impact. However, F1’s laser focus on anything red, white and blue made its lackluster presence feel like a missed opportunity.
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https://open.substack.com/pub/justinbur21/p/2024-formula-1-livery-ratings-and?r=2irxc8&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
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