Apple Makes NFL Admission as Formula 1 Targets Huge U.S. Growth

The bet Cue is making isn’t on F1 overtaking the NFL by Tuesday. It’s on the compounding effect of a sport growing from a genuinely small base into something much larger, distributed across Apple News, Apple Sports, Apple Maps, and Apple TV simultaneously.

Apple plans to carry F1 across Apple News, Apple Maps, Apple Music, Apple Sports, and Apple Fitness+, meaning race weekend is a hook and part of a larger product by the brand‘s scosystem.

“And so I don’t know how many millions, but it’s exponential. I think that’s the beauty. I think it’s grown from zero, so it’s grown a lot. But it has a lot of room to grow. I think when people become aware… I still remember when we did the [F1] movie and we used to ask people, ‘How many of you have ever seen a race?’ and nobody raised their hand. After the movie, you always ask them, ‘Would you like to see a race?’ and everybody raises their hand. You experience it and you see it. I think there is a huge opportunity. It’s not a 10 or 20 percent. I think it’s a ‘how many times X can we grow it over the years?'”

The Brad Pitt F1 movie eclipsed $690 million to become the highest-grossing sports film in history, and the awareness it generated is what Cue keeps coming back to. Domenicali, meanwhile, sees the Apple partnership as the mechanism for converting that awareness into something permanent – cultural relevance that outlasts a single box-office weekend.

Domenicali’s comments on NFL are less about hubris and more about ambition with clear eyes.

“It’s just the beginning of this journey,” he said. “The fact that we started with the Everest that is the NFL, if we are able in a couple of years to be seen by the NFL, ‘Oh what is happening here?’ it means for us it is incredible too. There are certain periods of the year where the NFL calendar is there. But to touch an NFL game for the Americans is to touch…

“I don’t know – you understand what I want to say! So how can we be relevant in this moment where the life of the Americans is connected when they wake up to the big screen or when they wake up with a little phone – with that world. So we need to understand how we can gain advantage or gain traction in such a complex world. And the only way to be sure that we can do it is through Apple now.”

Growing F1 in the U.S. will eventually force a reckoning with whether the sport wants to compete directly against the NFL. IndyCar has long worked around other sports, wrapping its season before American football takes over the fall calendar.

F1, with races in Las Vegas, Miami, and Austin and a global schedule it can’t simply restructure around one market, doesn’t have that option. But Cue’s plan to build the audience first and worry about the NFL later seems to be a reasonable way to play it. You don’t summit Everest on your first day at altitude.