In January 2025 the Mexico City E-Prix became the most watched race in Formula E history: 46 million viewers, 38% above the season average, with a cumulative audience of 10.5 million people (at least one minute of viewing) for a single programme on the American network CBS. It was not a final or a title decider. It was the second round of the championship.

It is a good place to start talking about Formula E viewership, because it tells two things at once: the electric championship has a growing audience, and that audience is concentrated in specific markets. For a brand, the second piece of information matters as much as the first.

Formula E viewership season by season

In season 10, 2023/24, Formula E reported a cumulative TV audience of 491 million viewers, 35% more than the previous year. The Monaco E-Prix had then set the record for a single race, with 40 million. The fan base, measured with a survey, had grown by 23%: on average, from 304 to 374 million.

In season 11, 2024/25, growth continued at a gentler pace: a cumulative audience of 561 million, up 14%, with an average of 33 million per race (up 16%). Fans rose to 422 million, 13% more, and 38% more than in season 8. Almost 37% of them, 158 million, are in four markets the championship considers priorities: the United States, China, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Digital moved too: in the same season video views grew by 47%, impressions passed 1.39 billion and social media followers increased by 10%, with TikTok becoming the championship’s second platform by number of followers (up 37%).

How to read these numbers

Formula E’s TV data is collected by Kantar Sport and its fan data by Potentia Insight, with a survey of 33,000 adults in 16 markets. These are figures published by the championship, and they should be read with a caveat: cumulative audience, according to Formula E’s own definition, counts the people who tuned in for at least one minute, and in its release on the first two races of season 11 the championship specified that its figures were preliminary snapshots, not consolidated data like those of Formula 1. So it is not the average audience of a race, and comparing it with the average audience declared by other championships (which use different metrics) leads to the wrong conclusions.

There is also a detail that says a lot about the caution needed: in the season 11 release the audience growth appears both as 14% and, in a statement by chief executive Jeff Dodds, as 17%. The direction does not change; the precision does. Anyone who has to justify an investment would do well to always ask for the exact metric and the scope of the measurement.

Where Formula E is growing

Growth is not uniform. In season 11 the cumulative race audience rose by 41% in the United Kingdom and by 12% in Germany, while the Mexico City record owes a lot to free-to-air coverage in the United States: 10.5 million cumulative viewers on CBS. In the season 10 survey China alone counted 118 million fans, Indonesia 27 million and Brazil 11 million.

For a sponsor this means that Formula E should not be assessed as an undifferentiated global championship, but as a sum of markets with very different weights. A brand that sells mainly in Germany or the United Kingdom finds in the championship a growing audience exactly where it needs one; a brand aiming at Italy needs to look more closely at single-market data and at the calendar.

What it offers a brand

Formula E brings a story all of its own, as the only FIA world championship for electric single-seaters: racing in cities, technology for energy and mobility. It is a natural setting for companies in energy, technology, automotive and urban services, which can use the track as a showcase for their expertise, not just their logo. The cars’ performance, meanwhile, has grown generation after generation, as we explain in our guide to how fast Formula E cars are.

The audience, however, should not be taken for granted. Formula E’s growth is real but has been built race after race, market after market, and a sponsorship that wants to exploit it must do the same: choose the markets where the championship is strong and activate its presence there, with hospitality, content and initiatives linked to the individual cities. How to do it is described on the page about Formula E sponsorship.

It remains to be seen whether the championship can turn audience growth into a stable following, one that watches the races for the competition and not just for the novelty. The latest numbers say that is the direction. For sponsors, the time to work out where and how to be there is now, not when the numbers have turned into prices.