A few seasons after the debut of the Netflix Formula 1 documentary series “Drive to Survive”, the racing league’s governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), presented the platform with a presentation containing evidence of the “Netflix effect”. Since the series premiered in 2019 as part of a concerted effort to expand the sport’s footprint in the United States, officials have seen social media engagement, merchandising, attendance and ratings from racing broadcasts improve in its least penetrated major market.
“It’s difficult to completely decouple: Formula 1 was doing a lot of great new stuff, you had a broadcast partner in ESPN who was also prioritizing it, and you had a partner in Netflix who was promoting the sport through documentaries. series,” Brandon recalls. Riegg, vice president, non-fiction series and sports, at the streamer. “But they were certainly very generous and said, ‘We attribute a lot of this to Netflix.’ And when we saw the gains they made in many categories, it was impressive, and I felt like we could take credit for that, at least in part.
Formula 1 is now about to return the favor.
With the first Friday of “Senne” a scripted mini-series about the life and career of Brazilian F1 legend Ayrton Senna, the rich history of the championship – filled with archive footage and permission from the FIA to recreate races, podiums, the logos, uniforms and track layouts of Senna’s heyday – becomes the source of yet another evolution in one of sports entertainment’s most innovative relationships.
“It almost becomes like an origin story for F1,” says “Senna” showrunner Vicente Amorim. “Do you like “Drive to Survive”? Are you an F1 fan? Maybe you’re planning to watch the movie “F1” next year? Maybe take a look at how it all started.
If Warner Bros. The 2025 feature film, developed in collaboration with the FIA and starring Brad Pitt, represents the sport’s promotional campaign on the scale of a Hollywood blockbuster, “Senna” instead stems from Netflix’s distinct approach to television international. The six-part series, which follows its dashing hero from his karting years in São Paulo until his tragic death, aged 34, at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, was produced in Brazil, filmed in wide partly in Portuguese and relied on Latin American artisans, particularly in the creation of its astonishing car replicas. It’s the same regional model that created crossover hits such as ‘Élite’ and ‘La Casa de las Flores’, applied to one of the most successful drivers in F1 history.
“We really made these shows thinking that they would be huge in Spain and Mexico, respectively, and I think it was precisely their authenticity and their very specific local value, their culture, their look and their vibe that made them made unique in their own country and then appealing globally,” says Francisco Ramos, vice president of Latin America content at Netflix, who worked on both titles “What we discovered, during this. nearly 10-year journey to create local content outside the United States is that the most accurate and authentic stories that accurately represent the cultures from which they originate are those that are able to resonate outside of their home territory. .
Conceived by the racer’s family and Brazilian production company Gullane, “Senna” came to Netflix after plans for a feature film ran into creative and financial obstacles – and quickly found a devoted fan in Amorim, who vividly remembers Senna’s heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he won three world championships. “It almost becomes a religion,” Amorim says of growing up in Brazil during this time. “Every Sunday you turn on the TV to see Senna probably win.”
Although the focus is on the triumph and tragedy of Senna’s career, as well as his relationships with his parents, Miltão (Marco Ricca) and Zaza (Susana Ribeiro), and his glamorous pop star girlfriend, Xuxa ( Pâmela Tomé), “Senna” is also the story of a sport in full modernization, on the verge of becoming the sumptuous global juggernaut that it is today. In 1994, the year Senna died, the F1 world championship consisted of 16 races, 11 of which were in Europe; 30 years later, the season now spans 24 races on five continents, including three in the United States alone. And Senna himself – handsome, media-savvy and impatient with the old-world politics he found in F1 when he joined the circuit in 1984 – was instrumental in setting the transformation in motion. As Amorim says: “There is an F1 “Before Senna” and an F1 “After Senna”.
Gabriel Leone as Ayrton Senna, right, with Matt Mella as Senna’s teammate and rival Alain Prost.
(Alan Rosky/Netflix)
The makeup of F1’s “After Senna” fan base is, in fact, a huge part of why Netflix has invested so heavily in its partnership with the sport. Although the FIA initially envisioned “Drive to Survive” as a way to reach American viewers, according to Riegg, Netflix viewed the docuseries as a “hedged bet”: if it failed to impose in the United States, it still had potential in other countries. where Netflix operates which has established followings in F1.
Ultimately, “Drive to Survive” stimulated interest in F1 not only in the United States but also around the world: when the FIA presented its presentation on the impact of the series to Netflix, “they made gains in some of the markets they thought were the most important.” mature countries, especially in Brazil, Italy and Spain,” explains Riegg.
Although Ramos insists that “Senna,” which was first announced in 2020, was not expressly intended to “feed off” the success of “Drive to Survive,” in many ways it embodies the same effort to diversify production and audiences that defined Netflix’s strategy. business in recent years. The release of promotional art and the trailer for “Senna” has sparked interest not only in Brazil but also in other F1 strongholds like Mexico, Argentina, Italy and Japan, while the docuseries could be said to have primed the pump for potential viewers in places like the United States which have a less established F1 audience.
“During the process of development and production, ‘Drive to Survive’ got bigger and bigger,” Ramos says. “This is not how we planned it. … But there is definitely an advantage that I cannot ignore.”
The advantage could also work in reverse, Riegg acknowledges, creating an opportunity “to widen the funnel or the entry point for people who are going to become fans of Formula 1 in general, whether it’s racing or something like our documentary series.
It’s an opportune time for Netflix’s relationship with F1 to evolve, as “Drive to Survive” faces its first real headwinds after years of audience growth.
“I think there has been a stabilization of the audience over the last two seasons,” Riegg says. “Over the first few seasons, the show continued to grow steadily and – I guess “plateau” is a word – then found its audience. There’s a natural ebb and flow to all of these shows, especially sports shows, or even our dating shows, which is analogous in some ways, where some seasons you just have stronger storylines than others. I think part of what F1 deals with is somewhat different from some other sports is that you had a winner in Max (Verstappen) and a team in Red Bull that really dominated for many years. many seasons in a row, so there’s kind of been less of the suspense and maybe some drama over the course of the season.
What’s not yet on the table for Netflix, Riegg points out, is live Formula 1 racing, even though the FIA’s current deal with ESPN on US television expires in 2025. And that’s not not because of the challenges the platform faced in increasing its streaming capacity. live programming, most recently during the boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, which resulted in numerous complaints about freezing, buffering and poor picture quality. That’s because Netflix is currently focusing on live TV on one-off events rather than a season-long commitment. “We’re in the crawl, walk, run phase,” says Riegg. “We’re definitely not in that business right now.”
And as “Senna” himself understands, it is commerce as much as horsepower that turns the wheels of sport. “F1 is a business,” says Amorim, repeating a real-life line from Senna’s rival Terry Fullerton, included in the series. “Except for two hours on Sunday.”
