Ian Holmes: “The show democratized the sport to new fans”

Involved in the sport for 20 years, the Englishman was, with former commercial director Sean Bratches, at the initiative of Drive To Survive (DTS) which injects new blood into Formula 1. The Director of Media Rights at Liberty Media spoke to us at length about it in Austin, during the last United States GP.

Published on 05/11/2021 à 09:00

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Ian Holmes: “The show democratized the sport to new fans”

Everyone is talking about a Netflix effect to explain the renewed interest around F1. Do you have figures to express this trend in a tangible way?

It is well known that Netflix is very discreet about its audiences. They only give us a few bits of information, for example the results of one show compared to another, the percentage of subscribers who started the first episode and finished the last, or the speed at which they go to the end of the series. We know that the 3rd season of DTS has experienced exponential growth. The audience was 50% higher than season 2. This is unprecedented. Generally, the audience for a series tends to erode over time. It must be said that the sports documentary genre is booming. Many people who watched The Last Dance pa