This weekend marks the return of Formula One for its 75th Season and big changes are afoot…
Lewis Hamilton’s in red, Daniel Riccardo has gone and, for the first time ever, women are making up 41% of viewers, with the fastest growing demographic being those aged 16-24.
This unprecedented surge in popularity amongst women is thanks, in no small part, to the huge popularity of Netflix’s show Drive to Survive; effectively Keeping Up With The Kardashians but for one of the most exciting sports in history.
The show, which follows the Formula One season, returned for the seventh year last weekend, and if previous stats are anything to go by, it’s likely to amass more than 100 million viewers.
And while there are grumblings among life-long F1 supporters that the series has attracted a cohort of fair weather fans – mostly girls accused of being more interested in drivers’ outfits than the engineering of the cars they’re racing – the effect the show has had on the sport is undeniable, and exciting.
But I suppose I would say that, because I am one of the aforementioned girlies.
Despite having grown up with the sounds of the F1 every other weekend of my childhood, it was my brother that ended up with a signed Alonso T-shirt framed on his bedroom wall and not me.
Whether I lacked the interest inherently or was excluded from the environment quite consciously, I don’t know. But either way, the F1 is something that I only truly invested in after the first season of Drive to Survive aired.
Relatively late to the game, I soon found myself invested in Hamilton’s wardrobe, familiarising myself with the star signs of most of the drivers, and my interest has only intensified year on year.
The show has made the sport more accessible to women in a way that it wasn’t really before – thanks, no doubt, to the sensational production of the show, which others are now tripping over themselves to replicate.
Where many men grew up with their father’s teaching them the ins and outs of the sport, for many women, like me, that fell to Drive To Survive’s resident journalist, Will Buxton.
His habit of pointing out the obvious, along with the shows endeavours to familiarise fans with the men beneath the helmets has made it so that 300 million women now follow F1 willingly.
For marketers and advertisers, this now makes the decision to get into Formula One sponsorship an incredibly lucrative business opportunity.
Forecasts suggest that women will control 75% of discretionary spending globally by 2029, and that more than half of female fans are likely to buy from companies that sponsor women’s sport, compared with just 0.1% of male fans.
In short, it’s a marketing masterpiece and one that brands are starting to tap into in a very real way.
Charlotte Tilbury made history in 2024 by becoming the first female-founded company to partner with the fast-growing F1 academy – headed up by Suzi Wolfe – and wrap a Formula 4 car in its iconic branding with the slogan ‘makeup your destiny’.
In that same month, partnerships like the one between Abercrombie & Fitch and McClaren were announced and saw women everywhere wearing the racing brand’s signature colour, papaya.
This year, skincare brand Elemis are sponsoring Aston Martin. This collaboration, and ones like it, reflect a broader trend of increased female engagement in motorsport, and actually, sports in general.
We saw it after the Lionesses won the Euros in 2022; in the fact that there was a 56% increase in women’s and girls’ participation in football overall, with a 140% increase in participation among girls under 16. And we’re seeing it again now with F1.
So it’s exciting that shows like Drive to Survive are making sports more accessible, and it’s vital that brands get behind it.
There’s just one barrier that we still have to overcome, and it’s the most formidable one by far: the average male fan.
This is the guy that sees a woman in the pub watching a football game and insists she explains the offside rule to him.
The one that needs you to tell him how many points are in a conversion, the starting line for the Chelsea vs Villa game last month, and who won the Euros in 1992 before he’ll consider you a legitimate fan (it was Denmark, in case you were wondering).
He’s the one that is annoyed with Drive to Survive – and not because of its occasional over-dramatisation or misrepresentation of the sport – and finds me and my ilk a constant point of contention.
I could speculate for hours about his motives; perhaps he’s protective of the community that he feels at home in, or maybe his lifelong interest in the sport has given him a sense of entitlement he doesn’t think anyone coming in any later deserves.
He could also be worried that as more traditionally ‘feminine’ things like makeup and fashion encroach on a historically male environment, it will be ruined.
Of course, in reality, an interest in cars is no more important or impressive than an interest in fashion, and appreciating a driver’s outfit doesn’t mean you can’t also care about how they drive, but good luck telling him that.
Had Drive To Survive brought in an influx of new male followers, I’m not sure there’d be the same disparity. But what I do know is that the gatekeeping of the fandom was a very big part of the reason I became as apathetic as I did in the first place.
It’s indicative of a wider exclusionary attitude we have towards women in both sports and sporting environments and we have to change that.
So, with every big move being made by brands in these areas right now, I feel a rush of excitement.
Finally, the extraordinary value of the fangirl is being recognised for what it is: one of the most powerful commodities of a capitalist society; worthy, at the very least, of a seat in the stands.
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