In 2025, Formula 1 Grands Prix recorded a total attendance of 6.7 million across their race weekends, an all-time record. And yet, as Formula 1’s own executives have been pointing out for years, 99% of fans do not attend a Grand Prix during the season. They follow the races on a screen, and more and more often on two: television or streaming for the race, the smartphone for everything happening around it.

The common assumption is that to be seen in motorsport, a logo in the right place is enough: on the livery, on the trackside billboard, on the driver’s race suit. I read it differently. The logo is still necessary, but on its own it only speaks to people watching the race. Real motorsport fan engagement, with an audience that lives the race on its phone, needs something a logo cannot do: content built for that audience, for those channels and for that moment.

The hyperdigital motorsport audience in numbers

The 2025 figures show that the hyperdigital audience is not a niche. According to Formula 1’s end-of-season review, its social media following reached 114.5 million, 19% more than in 2024, with growth outpacing the previous year above all on TikTok and YouTube; by the end of July 2026 it had passed 125 million. At the end of 2025 the championship put its fan base at 827 million people: 43% are under 35 and 42% are women.

MotoGP tells the same story. Its 2025 review reports 632 million fans, 12% more than the year before, over 60 million social media followers and more than one billion minutes of video watched on the official YouTube channel. More than half of its fans and followers are under 35, for the fifth year running.

These are figures declared by the championships themselves, and they should be read as such. But the direction is clear, and it is the same for both: the audience is growing above all where people watch vertically, scroll and comment.

The grandstand has moved into the pocket

For decades the grandstand was where fandom took shape: you watched, you talked it over with the person next to you, you argued about the last overtake. Today that grandstand sits inside the phone. During a race the second screen is where people comment, replay a move, look up the driver’s team radio and share a meme ten seconds after the chequered flag.

For a brand, this changes the question. It is no longer enough to ask where the logo will appear. You have to ask which digital grandstand you want to be in, and with what. Every channel has its own job. Instagram and TikTok reward short, visual moments, YouTube carries the longer story, from behind the scenes to the documentary, and real-time channels live on instant reaction. The same video recycled everywhere, in my experience, performs poorly everywhere.

Four types of content that work for a brand

Across several clients, I have seen four families of content work. They are not mutually exclusive: the best programmes combine at least two.

1. Access

The paddock is a closed world, and the audience wants to get in. A brand that takes fans where television does not go, into the garage, the workshop, a driver’s preparation, offers something they cannot find anywhere else. It is the most natural content for a sponsor, because the sponsor has already paid for that access.

2. Real time

During a race weekend attention peaks and does not last long. Comments, polls, updates and instant reactions work if they land at the right moment, and to land at the right moment they have to be prepared in advance, with an editorial plan and a team ready to publish.

3. The audience as author

Competitions, dedicated hashtags, live questions to the drivers: a fan who takes part remembers the brand better than one who only watches. Fan-created content costs little and widens the community, on one condition: the brand has to know how to listen and amplify, not only how to ask.

4. Entertainment

Motorsport also attracts people who do not follow the races, if the story is the right one. Formula 1 showed it with “Passenger Princess”, the YouTube series in which presenter and YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg, creator of “Chicken Shop Date”, rides along with the drivers: according to Formula 1, the first season passed 289 million views, and the second launched in July 2026. A brand can do the same with its own formats, as long as they are entertainment first and advertising second.

Data comes before production

Every piece of content leaves data behind: who saw it, for how long, from where, what they did next. Using it before producing the next piece is the difference between an editorial plan and a series of attempts. We cover this in more depth in our guide on how to use analytics in sponsorship strategies.

The point, in my view, is choosing the right metric. Followers and views tell you how many people walked past. The metrics that matter to a sponsor are different: leads collected, website visits, sales enquiries, sales from race-linked promotions. Content that is widely seen and never remembered is a cost.

Streaming changes who controls the audience

Meanwhile, the race itself has moved too. Since 2026 Formula 1 has been shown exclusively on Apple TV in the United States, under a five-year deal announced in October 2025, and the F1 TV Premium service is included in the Apple TV subscription. According to estimates in the specialist press, Apple pays around 140 million dollars a year.

For sponsors the consequence is concrete: a growing share of the audience watches the race inside platforms that know its habits and preferences, and that data stays with the platform. A brand that wants a direct relationship with fans has to build it on its own channels, with content good enough to bring them there.

Where brands stumble most often

At the negotiating table, I see the same four stumbles again and again. The first is talking about the logo instead of the race: fans follow motorsport, not the sponsor, and content that forgets the racing loses its audience. The second is disappearing between one weekend and the next: a Formula 1 or MotoGP season lasts around nine months, and a brand that only speaks up on Sunday leaves the other six days empty. The third is not reading the contract carefully: official race footage belongs to whoever holds the championship’s rights, and what a sponsor can use, and where, is set by the contract and by the licences granted by that rights holder. The fourth is measuring success with the numbers that look good in a meeting instead of the ones the business needs.

How we work on content for sponsors

Our work starts from the audience, not from the format. First we understand who follows the chosen sports property, on which channels and in which markets, then we build a plan that covers the whole season, inside and outside race weekends, and tie it to the sponsor’s activations, so that every event also produces content. Finally we measure results against the indicators agreed at the start. That applies to Formula 1 sponsorship as much as to MotoGP sponsorship.

The trackside billboard is seen by the people who are there. The right content is seen by the people who matter. Monday included.