Apple Bringing F1 Races to IMAX

Apple is building F1’s first three-tier distribution architecture

Apple’s announcement today of live F1 races in 50+ IMAX theaters marks the first time a single sports rights holder has simultaneously launched streaming, theatrical, and commercial venue distribution from day one of a deal.

Combined with the EverPass Media partnership for bars and restaurants and the $12.99/month Apple TV streaming package, Apple has built a deliberate three-channel architecture for F1 content with no precedent in sports media. The move transforms F1 from a broadcast property into a multi-format entertainment franchise while signaling a structural shift in how premium sports rights will be monetized in the streaming era.

This matters because it redefines the relationship between content rights and distribution. Traditional sports broadcasters acquire rights, then distribute them on a single platform.

Apple’s $750M Bet on Formula 1 is About Ecosystem Dominance

Apple is treating F1 like a lifestyle product, distributing it across every screen format it can reach while wrapping the entire experience inside the Apple ecosystem. For F1 teams, sponsors, and the broader motorsport industry, the implications for audience development, sponsorship valuation, and fan engagement are significant.

Apple’s F1 Deal Economics

Apple’s five-year exclusive U.S. broadcasting agreement, running 2026 through 2030, is valued at approximately $140–150 million annually, a 55–65% premium over ESPN’s final $85–90 million annual payment. The escalation is notable given ESPN initially paid effectively nothing when it acquired F1 rights in 2018. Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne called the financial impact “immaterial” to Apple’s $3.9 trillion market cap but noted the deal’s strategic upside, rating Liberty Formula One overweight with a $110 price target.

The multi-channel architecture is composed of three distinct layers. First, Apple TV streaming at $12.99/month delivers all practice sessions, qualifying, sprints, and races with select races available free. F1 TV Premium folds into the subscription, eliminating the standalone product in the U.S.

Second, five marquee races screen live in 50+ IMAX theaters: Miami (May 3), Monaco (June 7), Silverstone (July 5), Monza (September 6), and Austin (October 25).

Third, EverPass Media distributes F1 alongside MLS and MLB Friday Night Baseball to bars, restaurants, casinos, and clubs nationwide.

EverPass itself is a strategically significant entity. Founded in 2023 as a joint venture between the NFL and RedBird Capital Partners, with TKO (UFC/WWE parent) joining as an investor in 2024, EverPass is the only aggregator purpose-built for streaming-era commercial sports distribution. It already carries NFL Sunday Ticket, Amazon Prime Video sports, ESPN+, and Peacock Sports Pass. Apple’s addition of F1 means that virtually every major streaming-only sports property in America now flows through a single commercial distribution platform. Royce Dickerson, Apple TV’s head of production for live sports, stated: “I can’t understate how big a deal that is to have that deal done with EverPass.”

What makes Apple’s approach unprecedented is the coordination. NBC showed the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony in IMAX. ESPN has partnered with theaters for college football. But those were one-off activations. Apple is running five theatrical events across an entire season while simultaneously streaming every session and licensing to commercial venues…all under a single integrated rights deal.

The F1 Movie Birthed the IMAX Playbook

The IMAX partnership did not emerge from thin air. F1: The Movie, starring Brad Pitt, grossed $654 million globally with $97.6 million from IMAX screens.

It was the highest-grossing IMAX release in Hollywood in 2025 and the highest-grossing sports movie in history. IMAX accounted for 23% of the film’s North American opening weekend and 19% of global launch revenue. Those numbers proved that motorsport content translates to the premium large-format experience with striking commercial efficiency.

IMAX Chief Content Officer Jonathan Fischer explicitly cited the film’s performance as validation: the movie “proved beyond a doubt that the speed, precision, and artistry of Formula 1 translate beautifully to the IMAX Experience.”

Apple re-released F1: The Movie on 50 IMAX screens on January 30, 2026, following its Best Picture nomination at the 98th Academy Awards, keeping the F1-on-IMAX connection fresh just three weeks before announcing the live race partnership.

Oliver Schusser, Apple’s VP of Music, Sports, and Beats, who oversees the convergence of Apple’s entertainment verticals, framed the IMAX deal as an access expansion play: “By bringing F1 on Apple TV live to IMAX theaters nationwide, we’re delivering the energy and excitement to even more screens in a truly immersive way.”

Schusser, a 21-year Apple veteran recruited by Eddy Cue to expand iTunes into Europe, now sits at the intersection of music, streaming video, and live sports. The role alone reflects Apple’s strategy of unifying entertainment verticals under one executive for cross-platform deployment.

IMAX’s “3.0” strategy finds its anchor sport

For IMAX, the F1 partnership represents the most sustained live sports programming commitment in company history and validates CEO Rich Gelfond’s vision of “IMAX 3.0”: the evolution from science museums (1.0) to Hollywood blockbusters (2.0) to live events and alternative content (3.0). IMAX has been building toward this moment through a series of progressively ambitious live activations.

The company broadcast the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony across 150+ U.S. screens, partnered with NBC for a live Penn State “White Out” college football game (the first-ever live college football in IMAX), screened the 2024 NBA Finals live in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and collaborated with the NHL on Stanley Cup Playoffs screenings. Each event expanded the live infrastructure: from 70 wired theaters in early 2022 to 400+ by 2023. The Apple F1 deal moves IMAX from experimental one-offs to a programmatic, season-long sports relationship.

The technology platform is maturing in parallel. IMAX acquired SSIMWAVE in 2022, deploying its AI-powered StreamSmart technology to reduce live-streaming bitrates by 15%+ without visible quality loss. A partnership with LTN handles live transport networking. IMAX’s existing footprint of 1,807 systems across 90+ countries gives it unmatched scalability. Converting even a fraction of those screens to live sports creates a distribution network no competitor can replicate quickly.

Gelfond has been transparent about the strategic logic: “I think sporting events need to be live. There is an explosion in the experiential economy, with people actively seeking out live events.” IMAX live event tickets typically run $20–35, far below the cost of attending actual sporting events, positioning the format as an accessible premium tier between home streaming and in-person attendance.

Could COSM Be Next?

While Apple chose IMAX for its immediate F1 theatrical rollout, the most intriguing potential distribution channel may be COSM.

COSM is a venture-backed immersive venue company that has built what amounts to the premium sports bar of the future. COSM operates 87-foot-diameter LED dome venues with 12K+ resolution that deliver a 180-degree field of view at 100 times the brightness of traditional projection domes. The experience is fundamentally different from IMAX: where IMAX offers a superior flat screen, COSM wraps viewers in a half-dome that fills peripheral vision, creating what the company calls “Shared Reality.”

Founded in 2020 through acquisitions orchestrated by Steve Wynn’s Mirasol Capital, COSM raised $250 million in Series B funding in July 2024 at a $1 billion+ valuation.

Investors include Marc Lasry’s Avenue Sports Fund, Dan Gilbert’s ROCK, and David Blitzer’s Bolt Ventures. The company operates venues in Los Angeles (adjacent to SoFi Stadium) and Dallas, with Atlanta (early 2026), Detroit (September 2026), and Cleveland (mid-2027) under development. CEO Jeb Terry has articulated a vision of 50 venues by the end of the decade, with international expansion being actively pursued.

COSM already shows live sports from every major U.S. league, including the NFL, NBA, UFC, WWE, NASCAR, Premier League, Champions League, and NHL through partnerships with ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, TNT Sports, and Amazon Prime Video.

The company’s first motorsport activation was the Daytona 500 in February 2025, establishing a proof of concept for live racing in the dome format. Terry has explicitly named F1 as part of COSM’s vision: “Get behind the wheel of an F1 car? Real. 50-yard line at the Super Bowl? This is all real.”

Ticket pricing ranges from $6 for general admission (access to the Hall sports bar area) to $300+ for premium dome seating at marquee events. For the 2024 World Series, COSM LA sold dome tickets at $77–$300.

Compare that to the $1,000+ for secondary market tickets at Dodger Stadium.

The business model extends beyond tickets: in-house food and beverage operations (elevated gastropub fare and a full bar), corporate events, and sponsorship. Monster Energy became the first venue sponsor in January 2025 through a multi-year, multi-venue deal.

No formal COSM–Apple partnership exists for F1, and the transition of U.S. rights to Apple could either create or complicate opportunities. But the strategic logic is compelling.

What About The Sphere?

Talking about immersive experiences would be hard to do without atleast bringing up The Las Vegas Sphere.

Less a distribution channel, more a brand activation platform, the $2.3 billion, 17,600-seat, and 160,000-square-foot interior LED screen Sphere is a singular asset rather than a scalable model.

The Sphere hosted its first live sporting event, UFC 306, in September 2024. The $20 million production generated a record $22 million in gate and broke UFC records for VIP sales, merchandise, and sponsorship. Dana White subsequently called it an event that “will never be done again” due to the production cost and complexity, though the commercial results were extraordinary.

For F1 specifically, the Sphere’s relevance is geographic and visual. The venue sits along Turns 5–9 of the Las Vegas Grand Prix circuit, serving as both a fan zone anchor (the “T-Mobile Zone at Sphere”) and a globally visible billboard during race broadcasts. During the 2023 inaugural Las Vegas GP, the Sphere debuted live-cued Exosphere content that tracked F1 cars in real time using GPS data. Apple took over the entire Sphere during the 2025 Las Vegas GP weekend to promote its F1 rights deal. The Sphere is effectively part of F1’s broadcast imagery, making it a sponsorship and brand activation asset rather than a viewing venue for F1.

Supply and Demand

The distribution strategy is set against the backdrop of extraordinary U.S. audience growth. F1 average race viewership on ESPN rose from 554,000 in 2018 to 1.3 million in 2025, a 135% increase that makes F1 the fastest-growing major motorsport property in America. Seven of the first 12 races in the 2025 season set new individual event viewership records. The 2024 Miami GP drew 3.1 million viewers, an all-time U.S. record for a live F1 race.

The growth was catalyzed by Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which launched in March 2019. Morning Consult data from 2022 showed 53% of adult U.S. F1 fans cited the docuseries as a reason they became fans, with that figure rising to 74% among fans under 45. But the effect has compounded beyond Netflix: by 2023, fans were more likely to discover F1 through social media (22%) or family (21%) than the show itself (14%). The funnel has diversified.

The demographic composition of the new F1 audience is especially valuable from a commercial perspective. 47% of new U.S. F1 fans are aged 18–24, and over half are female.

The 2026 calendar features three U.S. races, giving the United States more Grands Prix than any other country. Combined U.S. race attendance exceeded one million in both 2023 and 2024. And the U.S. now accounts for the largest share of respondents in F1’s Global Fan Survey, with an estimated 52 million American fans.

Distribution as a Commercial Amplifier

The commercial implications of Apple’s multi-channel architecture extend directly to F1 team sponsors and commercial partners.

F1 team sponsorship revenue reached $2.04 billion in 2024, second only to the NFL, and is projected to hit $2.9 billion in 2025, representing a 128% increase from 2021.

Theatrical and immersive distribution changes the sponsorship value proposition in three ways. First, IMAX screenings create premium, measurable audience environments where sponsor logos on cars, halos, and sidepods are displayed at cinema-scale resolution with immersive audio.

Second, communal viewing in IMAX theaters and commercial venues via EverPass generates social amplification: fans photograph, share, and discuss the experience, extending brand exposure beyond the venue.

Third, the year-round content ecosystem Apple is building (streaming, theatrical, commercial, plus Apple News, Apple Sports app, and Apple Music integration) keeps sponsors visible beyond the 90-minute race window.

Nielsen Sports data indicates that fans engaging with immersive or AR-enhanced content are 56% more likely to attend races and 67% more likely to purchase merchandise. Experiential marketing generates eight times more brand recall than traditional advertising. For F1’s sponsor base, which commands average deal values of $6 million (versus $745K in the NFL), the addition of IMAX and venue distribution creates new premium inventory that could justify sponsorship price escalation.

The Experiential Viewing Market

The global immersive entertainment market was valued at $137.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2033, growing at 29.4% CAGR, with North America holding 44% market share. The live events XR sub-segment alone is expected to grow from $8.4 billion in 2024 to over $33 billion by 2030.

The demand drivers are reinforcing.

Average NFL ticket prices surged 18% year-over-year in 2025 to $156, with a family of four spending over $2,100 at a Philadelphia Eagles game. As live attendance pricing accelerates beyond mass-market reach, the gap between “watching on TV” and “being at the game” creates a new market tier: premium out-of-home experiences that deliver immersive quality at accessible prices.

Deloitte’s 2025 sports outlook specifically predicted “a whole new category of sports experiences” could emerge, citing COSM and the Sphere by name.

Consumer behavior data supports the thesis. PwC research shows that younger fans are 1.4 times more likely to attend live sports at least once a month and spend $70 more on average on tickets, despite having 20% lower average incomes.

62% of younger fans want a “unique and memorable experience” at live events. Only 31% of fans aged 18–24 watch live sports on traditional television, compared to 75% of those 55 and older.

The audience Apple and F1 are targeting—young, affluent, experience-seeking—is precisely the demographic driving demand for venues like COSM and experiences like IMAX live sports.

For example, Fathom Events, which distributes live boxing and UFC to standard movie theaters, reported record gross revenues of $145 million in 2024, a 45% increase from 2023.

A Blueprint with Compounding Advantages

Apple’s playbook is clear: a distribution architecture designed to compound audience growth across multiple touchpoints simultaneously.

For the motorsport industry, the strategic question is whether this three-tier model becomes the template for premium sports distribution. We’re watching the infrastructure get built in real time.

Apple faces the risk of viewership fragmentation. Morgan Stanley noted that “moving from ESPN to Apple presents viewership risk”.

Of note, ESPN’s cable footprint still reaches far more households than Apple TV’s estimated 45 million subscribers. Even some F1 team owners and sponsors have expressed concern about the tension between short-term cash and long-term audience accessibility.

But Apple’s counter-argument is that there are nearly 300 million U.S. iPhone users, which represents a distribution surface ESPN never had, and the free tier for select races provides an on-ramp for casual viewers.

By placing races in IMAX theaters alongside blockbuster films and in bars alongside NFL games, they are repositioning F1 from a niche European import to an embedded element of American sports culture. The venues, the technology, and the audience trajectory all suggest this repositioning is just beginning.