M.G. Siegler • #apple tv • Oct 17, 2025

The Checkered Flag is Out, Apple Finally Takes F1 Rights

And all Apple TV subscribers will benefit!

One of the worst kept secrets in sports and media of the past several months is finally, officially done:

Apple and Formula 1 announced a five-year media rights deal Friday that will bring every F1 race to Apple TV beginning in 2026.

Apple TV will provide coverage of all Formula 1 events, including practice, qualifying and Sprint sessions, as part of the streamer’s existing $12.99 per month subscription, which comes ad-free. Certain F1 races and all practice sessions will also be available for free in the Apple TV app throughout the season, the companies said in a statement.

That last bit is actually a bit of a surprise. Unlike with their MLS deal, Apple apparently won't be upselling everyone on F1, instead it will be included with Apple TV – not the box, the service formerly known as Apple TV+ (Eddy Cue insists this isn't confusing, but it's certainly confusing to write about). That's great news, both for Apple TV subscribers and for F1. I suspect it's also something F1 wanted given Apple TV's relatively small reach – certainly compared to ESPN, their current partner that they're leaving in the dust here – they don't want to limit the audience further than they already are here.

A tangential interesting tidbit:

F1 TV Premium, the league’s own content offering that’s popular with racing fans, will continue to be available in the U.S. but will now require an Apple TV subscription. Once a customer subscribes to Apple TV, F1 TV Premium will be included in their Apple subscription rather than as a standalone offering.

This service was apparently another hold up, with many wondering if it would just go away (at least in the US) with an Apple deal. But it will remain as sort of a "pro" offering for F1 fans – though nicely not in price, as it's also included with Apple TV, the service, not the box. That's also great and important because while F1 has been growing as a sport in the US, it's not as popular as it is in Europe and elsewhere. Now it will be on Apple's shoulders to help with that.

Well, and Netflix. That's always been a wrinkle here. One big reason why the sports' popularity has been growing in the US (and around the world) is the Drive to Survive series which Netflix has been showing for years now. This is a big part of the reason why the initial rumors of a change in distribution partners included the world's biggest streaming service. But to me, it always felt like Apple would be in the running here – this just felt like an Apple move (least of which because Eddy Cue is on the board of Ferrari) – as I wrote back February on the Netflix rumors:

One more thing: Apple remains a wildcard given their own sports ambitions. And the fact that their biggest swing yet for Apple TV+, the Brad Pitt-starring, Joseph Kosinski-directed F1 movie, is coming this summer. Then again, they seemingly like deals such as the one they have with MLS for worldwide rights. Per this report, F1 would prefer to spread such rights out and Sky Sports in the UK already has a much longer deal with F1, so worldwide is likely out of the picture. Still, it would be cool to see an F1 race in 'Immersive Video'. And I'd bet that Eddy Cue agrees (and don't forget)...

And I doubled-down on that notion in May as Apple started to ramp up the (very expensive) marketing for F1, the movie:

The new trailer for F1 — aka, the movie that will make or break Apple’s feature film ambitions after some comically bad decisions — continues to look great. The exact type of movie that demands you see it in a theater. Ideally, an IMAX. And it should cement Joseph Kosinski as the king of big budget action movies in Hollywood. Still weird that Apple isn’t pushing harder for the actual F1 rights in light of this?

Well, the movie hit and was a hit (optically, if not exactly fiscally). And that probably sealed this deal. And now here we are with Apple paying a lot of money for a sport after paying a lot of money for a movie about the sport.

Apple is paying about $140 million per year for the racing rights, according to people familiar with the matter. Disney’s ESPN is the incumbent media partner for the league and had been paying about $85 million per year on average, according to people familiar with that deal, who asked not to speak publicly because the details are private.

This is where Apple is Apple and Disney is Disney. One is a nearly $200B media company, the other is a nearly $4T tech company. $140M is very relative here. Apple makes that amount of revenue in about 3 hours.¹

And the countdown is now officially on for F1 2...

One more thing: it's clearly just a matter of time until we do get a full-on Apple Immersive experience here. That probably wasn't a major selling point of this deal, but it also couldn't have hurt. The version Apple has of this already is awesome. And now with the move (finally) into real time immersive sports content coming with some NBA games, hopefully this is something Apple can ramp quickly. That would help both F1 and help Apple sell some Vision Pros!