Formula 1 used to be a niche obsession. Loud engines, weird schedules, and rules that felt deliberately hostile to newcomers. That era is dead.
According to the official 2025 Season Review, the sport now claims 827 million fans worldwide, with a record 6.7 million people physically showing up at circuits this season. That’s not a blip. That’s a cultural shift — and it’s dragging sim racing into the mainstream with it.
Let’s be honest: sports don’t grow like this by accident.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
Here’s the headline reality check:
- 827 million global fans — up 12% from last year, up 63% since 2018
- 6.7 million race-weekend attendees — the highest in F1 history
- 19 of 24 events completely sold out — including Las Vegas (300,000+) and Silverstone (500,000)
- 43% of fans under 35 — the demographic most sports are desperately chasing
- 48% of new fans were women — nearly half
This isn’t incremental growth. This is a sport rewriting the rules of global reach.
While other motorsport series age gracefully into irrelevance, F1 is somehow doing the opposite: getting younger, louder, and more mainstream without losing its edge. The sport now claims a larger global fanbase than the NBA.
Why Younger Fans Are Hooked
Formula 1 finally learned something simple: racing alone isn’t enough.
Short-form clips, behind-the-scenes drama, on-board chaos, and personalities that actually feel human. Drivers aren’t anonymous helmets anymore. They stream on Twitch, meme on social media, argue with race directors, and occasionally say the wrong thing on camera. Perfect.
Then there’s Drive to Survive. Over half of American F1 fans credit the Netflix series as the reason they started watching. And this year, F1 The Movie starring Brad Pitt grossed $631 million worldwide — the highest-grossing sports film ever made, and Apple’s first theatrical blockbuster.
Suddenly F1 isn’t just something you watch on Sunday afternoon — it’s something you follow all week.
This matters because modern fandom isn’t passive. It’s interactive, obsessive, and gear-driven.
What This Means for Sim Racing
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: sim racing is riding F1’s slipstream — and that’s a very good thing.
The numbers tell the story. The sim racing equipment market hit $729 million in 2024 and is projected to reach $1.7 billion by 2031. That’s 12.7% annual growth, running almost perfectly parallel to F1’s mainstream explosion.
iRacing broke its all-time record in January 2025 with 300,000 simultaneous active accounts. The F1 Sim Racing World Championship drew nearly 80,000 concurrent viewers this year — bigger numbers than many real motorsport events.
When millions of new fans fall in love with the sport, a chunk of them inevitably want to drive, not just watch. They buy wheels. They build rigs. They obsess over lap times at 2 AM. That pipeline has never been stronger.
Every sold-out grandstand is also a future sim racer discovering why brake bias matters.
And unlike real motorsport, sim racing doesn’t require sponsorship, travel budgets, or permission. Just curiosity and a credit card.
The Drivers Are Already Here
This isn’t theoretical. The biggest names in F1 are already sim racers.
Max Verstappen runs endurance races on iRacing between Grand Prix weekends. Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris stream regularly with high-end setups that would make any sim racer jealous. They’re not doing promotional appearances — they’re genuinely competing.
That visibility matters. When a three-time world champion posts his rig setup, it normalizes the hobby and creates an aspirational connection for fans who just watched him win on Sunday.
All ten F1 teams now operate official esports divisions. Sim racing isn’t a sideshow anymore — it’s woven into the fabric of the sport itself.
The Big Picture
Formula 1’s 2025 numbers tell a clear story: this isn’t a sport peaking — it’s a platform expanding.
It’s becoming younger without becoming shallow. Global without becoming bland. Technical without becoming inaccessible. That balance is incredibly hard to pull off, and F1 is pulling it off better than almost any major sport right now.
For fans, that’s exciting. For sim racers, it’s fuel. The bigger F1 gets, the more people will want to experience what it actually feels like behind the wheel — even if that wheel is mounted to a rig in their living room.
And for everyone still calling F1 “boring”? The grandstands disagree.
They’re louder than ever. And so are the sim rigs.
Ready to experience what 827 million fans are obsessed with? Check out our sim racing equipment and find the perfect setup to bring the F1 experience home.