Miami Grand Prix is both Americanized and localized, and that draws mixed reviews

MIAMI GARDENS – During most of the 24 weekends on the 2024 Formula One circuit, the high-speed Grand Prix auto race is the focal point, the main thing.

And there are celebrity-laden parties wrapped around the race.

At the Miami Grand Prix, it sometimes seems the other way around.

At the Miami Grand Prix it sometimes seems that the parties and celebrity sightings are the main thing, and the race is the sideshow.

Whatever is going on, people are watching. Miami Grand Prix 2022, the inaugural event, attracted a record 2.6 million TV viewers followed by 1.96 million viewers in 2023. The average Formula 1 race viewership in 2023 was 1.11 million.

It’ll be interesting to see viewership numbers from Miami Grand Prix 2024, the third annual event, which starts at 4 p.m. Sunday at The Miami International Autodrome (Hard Rock Stadium).

It’s true that the venerable Monaco Grand Prix might be more celebrity-laden than Miami. But there’s a sentiment that those long-established fans are there for the race.

There’s a question about what percentage of Miami Grand Prix fans are there for the race, and what percentage are there to see and be seen, or be associated with the recent F1 racing trend.

Some have called this phenomenon the “Americanization” of the sport.

Juan Pablo, a 24-year-old Argentina resident and F1 fan, was visiting Miami and stopped into Fort Lauderdale driver Logan Sargeant’s event on South Beach on Tuesday. Sargeant’s car was on display.

“Seeing an F1 car is amazing,” said Pablo, a soccer fan who has followed F1 since 2012.

Pablo agrees with the “Americanization” label.

“I do think it’s Americanized,” Pablo said of the three U.S.-based F1 races – Miami, Las Vegas and Austin, “but I think it’s amazing because it gives a lot of publicity to the sport, so I think that’s great.”

There are, however, those who push back at the “Americanization” label, calling it a sweeping generalization.

Tyler Epp, president of the the F1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix, said there are some Americans who have been watching F1 for decades and others who have been watching for months.

“The way that those two people engage with Formula One are very, very different,” he said, “and to treat those fans the same way is ill-informed.”

Having the Miami Grand Prix viewed as a who’s who, see-and-be-seen event isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It’s just that it’s a different thing.

And it could be catching.

For example, The Miami Grand Prix had a swimming pool. The next year Barcelona had a swimming pool at the Spain Grand Prix.

This is how trends form.

Liberty Media, the American-owned company that also owns Sirius XM, bought F1 in 2017.

Since then it has aggressively sought to barge into the U.S. market, and it’s been successful.

Liberty wants every event on its circuit, which spans 21 nations, to have its own local personality, meaning Miami won’t look like Austin, and the British Grand Prix won’t look like the Austrian Grand Prix or the Singapore Grand Prix.

“I think that every promoter is allowed to spread their wings,” Epp said, “and every promoter is allowed to say, ‘This is the F1 race in Miami, this is the F1 race in Austin, this is the F1 race in Mexico City.’”

Partly, or some would say largely, due to the Netflix series, “Drive to Survive,” which thrived during COVID, when people typically binged on shows, F1’s popularity has recently soared in America. But it has also dipped.

Its U.S audience averaged 1.11 million viewers per race last year on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, which is twice its 2018 total.

But it’s also an 8% drop from the 2022 record total of 1.21 million per race.

By comparison, NASCAR averaged 3.03 million U.S. viewers per race in 2022 on the FOX networks, so F1 isn’t running the motorsports scene in America.

Still, F1 is doing big things.

Reports say its audience is 40% female.

Last year’s Super Bowl had a 47.5% female audience.

The Miami Grand Prix, which wasn’t received kindly by its neighboring community in 2022, is trying to be a good neighbor.

The community restaurant program gives local restaurants a chance to sell their food and products on the race campus and introduce themselves to a different crowd.

There’s the F1 Academy, now in its second year of promoting female drivers.

There’s the 30-student “F1 in Schools” program, a type of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) program that gives local youngsters opportunities to apply work from those fields to F1 cars.

There’s also a MIA Academy, a paid 16-person internship program that gives youngsters in the community of Miami Gardens, a mostly African-American, middle class and lower middle class area surrounding The Miami International Autodrome (Hard Rock Stadium), a chance to learn more about communications, corporate partnerships and fan experience.

The Miami Grand Prix was a big hit last year in Miami.

Among last year’s celebrity sightings around the Miami Grand Prix campus and the surrounding events were were two of the wealthiest people in the world, Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, as well as actors Tom Cruise and Vin Diesel, hip-hop artist Ludacris, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tennis star Serena Williams, hip-hop artist/producer DJ Khaled, and designer Tommy Hilfiger.

F1 racing has introduced three American races in the last dozen years or so – Austin, Las Vegas and Miami.

The last two are the concerns. 

Or the future, depending on your point of view.

In Miami, the party started Friday afternoon with DJ Steve Aoki hosting a party at the Hard Rock Beach Club, described as an area where “South Beach meets Formula One,” on the premises of The Miami International Autodrome.

The bottom-line ticket, or race pass, is $150.

It’s the equivalent of a $20 nosebleed seat at the Dolphins, Heat, Panthers, Hurricanes, etc…

You don’t get access to VIP events or areas.

And just as at Dolphins, Heat, Panthers or Hurricanes games, if your spending limit restricts you to a minimum-cost seat, you probably can’t afford many concessions.

But F1 wants you to know you can still enjoy yourself and have a great day at the track, whether you enjoy the celebrities or the racing. And that’s really what Epp and F1 want for their American audience in general, and their South Florida audience in particular.

They contend F1 isn’t as Americanized as it is localized.

“F1 allows us, and encourages us to put our local flair on it because it gives their business an impact,” Epp said of the races.

“So we actually like the fact that they give us that ability to be a little bit different as a promoter here. But I don’t think we can bucket the ‘Americanization’ into one group. I think that’s a bit unfair.”