The spectacular three-way sprint between Piastri, Norris and Verstappen is great news not only for Formula 1 fans, but for Formula 1 itself, which can once again expect a “monstrous” audience from the Abu Dhabi grand finale and satisfied sponsors, especially overseas. The two McLarens and the Dutchman arrive at the last leg of a very long season -24 races and 6 sprints – separated by only 16 points, an extraordinary sporting achievement that makes the Emirates weekend exciting and unpredictable.

Competitiveness as a key value of sports marketing

La competitiveness is one of the seven parameters that sports marketing uses to compare sports disciplines with each other: popularity, sustainability, technological level , spectacularity, usability and non-litigiousness are the other six.

To summarize, competitiveness within a sport is the gap-expected and then materialized-that passes between the first and second place finishers and, in general, the predictability of the final outcome. Why this data is important is easy to understand: races and championships that are difficult to predict, with the winner always in the balance, keep audiences and stakeholders tuned in front of the screen and engaged on media platforms. Conversely, seasons closed well in advance or with a winner already written mid-year take much away from the pathos and emotional charge of a tournament or championship.

Conversely, competitiveness is also perhaps the element-among the seven-the least malleable and buildable. If, for example, it is possible to field actions to increase sustainability or plan strategies to impact usability, here is where it is difficult to find recipes for success to make sure that the level of competition is fair and that competitors are well leveled in terms of performance.

Motorsport, an extraordinarily regulated set of disciplines, seeks to work on sporting and financial rules (the cost cap is a good example) in an effort to create “level playing field” for all, shuffling the rulebook cards from time to time, as will happen in 2026 for Formula 1. This is especially important when looking at the U.S. market, a potentially huge but as yet unripe market for F1.

Formula 1 and playoffs: the U.S. crossroads

It is no mystery that the Americans have always put competitiveness at the heart of their sports marketing strategies, operating in almost any league under a cost cap – the maximum spending ceiling that any team can reach before incurring penalties – and largely adopting the formula of the playoffs.

In fact, it is in the United States that the post-season takes its origin, when in 1932 two National Football League teams finished the regular season with the same win-loss record and having tied both head-to-head matchups. The NFL then decides to hold another game between the two teams to decide the winner – calling it the “Play Off.” It is an extraordinary success with the public, and soon it is realized that this new formula is an extraordinary idea that, perfected and replicated, must be put on the field every year.

The NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS, NHL, and many other star-studded tournaments have almost always adopted this system to anoint the winner of the year, just as it happens in Europe for sports such as volleyball, basketball, and even some soccer leagues. Even NASCAR, America’s most popular motor sport, follows a regular season with a series of seven playoff races, which decide the winner of the championship.

It should come as no surprise, then, that it was Greg Maffei, American CEO of Liberty Media, who ventilated in the spring of 2024 a playoff Formula 1 like the stock car championship. 20 regular season races and 4 playoffs between the top ten finishers was the proposed formula, though pronounced in the knowledge that such a shakeup would take time, patience and a lot of work.

What sponsors and investors expect

Although it is impossible -to date- to think that the planet’s top four-wheel championship will change the methodology for awarding the final trophy, it is certain that a sport as global and ever-changing as Formula 1 must find a way to keep interest high throughout the year for a variety of different audiences, sponsors and stakeholders with different expectations.

Simplifying greatly, while it is true that a European stakeholder is accustomed to watching the Premier League, Serie A or La Liga seasons , it is also true that his American (but also Asian, in many cases) counterpart expects that in the very last leg of the World Cup the fate of the season will be decided. Accustomed to NBA finals, Stanley Cup, SuperBowl and World Series in many people have difficulty understanding what happens to the sport after the winner is announced 4 races in advance as happened to Marc Marquez and MotoGP.

Again, it is impossible to govern with certainty the progress of a season without going to work on what is instead one of the main components of the sports product itself, namely unpredictability. That said, it is certain that what has been accomplished in recent years by Formula 1 is a small masterpiece of marketing and strategy, as well as yet another glaring proof that the Liberty Media group knows what it is doing and has every intention of keeping the tiller straight for the foreseeable future as well. The massive rule change that awaits us from 2026 lies precisely in this groove, placing two central issues right on the table for Competitiveness: a general rule revolution that more or less starts everyone from scratch, and a new generation of smaller, more agile cars that should avoid Monte Carlo-style trains.

The risk of excessive handling

The downside of an almost obsessive pursuit of competitiveness and spectacle is necessarily that of excessive manipulation of the sport that compromises its credibility and authenticity. In essence, while it is good to try to work to ensure that the product remains interesting, it cannot be distorted to the point of making it appear uncredible to longtime fans. This is precisely where many of the conversations about mandatory pit stops, active aerodynamics, DRS, programmed compound changes, and numerous of the regulatory and technological innovations made to increase the number of overtakes possible and try to spice up the competition insist.

The line, it will be understood, is thin and is again grafted onto a decisive marketing issue, which is that of positioning. Better to lean toward a traditionalist Formula 1 for competent garagists or on a more streamlined, exciting and constantly rethinking sport? Probably the answer lies somewhere in between although, and the Americans know this very well, being salomonic on these issues does not necessarily always prove to be the best decision.

Never so high

Leaving theory aside for a moment-although it is now clear that the sports management process applied by Liberty to Formula 1 has been of exceptional scope and depth-what we are witnessing from a marketing and sporting perspective is a perfect and singular alignment of the planets. Formula 1, never so rich and never so popular, has succeeded in the historic feat of bringing the drivers’ trophy to the last round of the championship, concentrating in a single sporting moment all the power that the championship embodies at this moment in history. Abu Dhabi is a great moment for motorsports but also the excellent case study of a journey that began in January 2017 and now finds perhaps its zenith.