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ESPN reports viewer gains for Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
Last weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix had the second-largest U.S. audience ever for the event, ESPN announced on Tuesday.
The race, which was moved to ESPN after initially being listed for ESPN2, attracted an average audience of 1.5 million viewers – more than a third of those coming from the 18-49 demographic – with a peak of 1.7 million. It represented an increase from 920,000 that tuned in to last year's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which was held six weeks earlier in the year and on a Saturday rather than its regular Sunday slot to accommodate Ramadan which began the day after the race.
The strong numbers for the race in Jeddah continues a trend for grands prix on ESPN, with all five races so far this season delivering a year-over-year viewership increase. The Australian and Chinese Grands Prix also had record audiences, the latter up by 32 percent from the previous record set last year, despite the 3AM ET start time. The season opener in Australia attracted 541,000 more viewers than the same event last year, while its 1.1 million average blew away that event's previous record of 659,000 set in 2019.
The next race, the Miami Grand Prix, takes place on Sunday May 4. The race starts at 4PM ET, and will be shown on ABC and ESPN+.
Last year's race at the Hard Rock stadium attracted the largest live television audience for an F1 grand prix, with and average of 3.1 million tuning in, plus a Saturday record average of 946,000 for that weekend's Sprint race – this year’s event will also have a Sprint, starting at 12PM local time on Saturday May 3.
Dominik Wilde
Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?
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