Formula One is getting ready for a big event, as Las Vegas will host the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Saturday night. To get fans ready for Formula One action in the United States, CNBC released a one-hour documentary called Inside Track: The Business of Formula 1, which is hosted by CNBC anchor Sara Eisen. PopCulture.com spoke to Eisen about the documentary and she explained that her sons are the reasons she wanted to take a deep dive into the business aspect of the sport.
“I have two boys, 4 and 5 years old, and they’re obsessed with F1,” Eisen told PopCulture. “They know all the driver’s names, all the teams, all the statistics. They even know nerdy engineering stuff behind the sport like DRS or tire strategy. So F1 weekends, which happen pretty frequently, there are more than 20 races per year are big events in my household. And it got me thinking that’s got to be a really strong statement on the business. And it turns out that F1 is a really unique business story, which is why we decided to take it on CNBC from when it got bought six years ago. How the business has transformed to how it’s attracting all sorts of companies that we cover every day on CNBC from Salesforce to Amazon that want to get in on the action.”
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On Inside Track, Eisen talks to notable figures in Formula One, including Sir Lewis Hamilton who has won seven Formula One World Championships. Eisen learned that Hamilton is a “mega-celebrity, ” but what stood out to her is how Hamilton is outspoken when it comes to people having more access to Formula One.
“He really talks about in this documentary is the accessibility of the sport. It kind of gets a bad rep for being an elitist sport. It’s hard to break into,” Eisen explained. “For young kids if they want to be F1 drivers, first of all, there are only 20 spots and second of all, they have to start and it’s very expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain as a sport. And so Lewis is really passionate and clear on this issue of F1, needing to open it up to a broader fan base and make people feel like they can get into it as well. He talks about the fact that if he were coming at the sport today, he wouldn’t be able to coming from a humble background like his. And so I think that that’s a really important issue for him is accessibility to the sport.”
Formula One competes all over the world and has a strong fanbase. But Eisen knows the United States is the key to the sport reaching new heights. “They’ve just started to grow the fans in this country, but there’s a long way to go and there’s a lot of white space. And I think Liberty is betting that bigger events like this one will draw in more people in this country,” Eisen said.
“But to the growth point, that’s a big question mark we look at in the documentary; they can’t necessarily grow the number of races. They’re already set to have 24 on the calendar next year. It’s a lot. It’s hard to grow the number of teams, too. They’re technically allowed to add two more teams, but there’s not a ton of appetite to grow more teams beyond the 10 teams because then they would have to split the revenues. So it really is all about growing the fan base and growing it in the United States so that they can do bigger broadcast deals.”
Inside Track premiered on CNBC on Thursday and will air again throughout the week. It will start streaming on Peacock on Dec. 15.
