Formula One Determined to Reform the Fan Experience

Formula One’s new Commercial chief, Sean Bratches, is setting the sport up to “detonate the fan experience”, to change the F1 media platform for the better.

It’s no secret that Formula One’s treatment of fan viewership and accessibility has fallen by the wayside. The sport still stands as the premier class in Motorsports, yet it runs on an abysmal media infrastructure. With locked-in cable deals from yesteryear, just trying to watch the sport ends up being a bigger pain in the ass than it needs to be.

.@ValtteriBottas

8️⃣0️⃣ laps this afternoon ??

… it wasn’t all plain sailing ? #F1Testing #F1 pic.twitter.com/AERmDr2ufX

— Formula 1 (@F1) February 28, 2017

Rejoice then, fellow followers of all things related to Formula One, as Liberty Media’s takeover is now complete. Sean Bratches has every intention to shake up the way that that things are run. Set phasers to stun:

“The basis of this, if you peel everything back, is that every single thing that we’re doing has to pivot around the fan. The fan is at the center of all our theses in terms of driving this sport because if we’re doing the best job we can serving fans, both the existing fans and the new fans, that’s a win.

That engagement can come from having a sponsor engage them, the rights holder engage them, the teams engage the or the drivers engage them. And that’s central to how we’re looking at the business.

We have big events 20 times every single year in 20 different countries and there’s an extraordinary opportunity to detonate the fan experience in a very positive way.” – Sean Bratches.

Slo-Mo-Ro-Gro…#F1Testing pic.twitter.com/YcFVK72ARa

— Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) March 1, 2017

Bratches has definitely got his head screwed on straight. For the longest time, Formula One has been ran in this odd sort of way that would treat fans as lucky onlookers rather than prized customers. It was only until the advent of social media like Twitter which gave teams and drivers a direct link to their fans that things began to change. Looks like Liberty Media is the type of organisation that F1 has needed for quite some time.