Apple Pushes Vision Pro into F1
Apple is making its most ambitious sports streaming play yet, unveiling a wide-ranging Formula 1 coverage plan for the Vision Pro with high-fidelity video and multiview options. The push into immersive sports comes as Apple continues to release new immersive video content and just shipped an OS update to fix media playback bugs.
Apple's deal for Formula 1's U.S. rights is reportedly valued at around $150 million per year, nearly doubling the previous $85 million paid by ESPN. The multi-year partnership makes Apple TV the exclusive U.S. home for every session, including practice, qualifying, and the Grand Prix itself. The Vision Pro experience allows users to watch up to five simultaneous feeds, including in-car cameras, live telemetry, and a bird's-eye driver tracker map. Apple is also rendering all 24 Grand Prix tracks in 3D within Apple Maps, offering detailed views of turns, elevations, and landmarks like the pit buildings and grandstands. This investment targets F1's rapidly expanding and diversifying fanbase, which hit 827 million globally in 2025—a 63% increase since 2018. The audience is getting younger, with 43% of fans under 35, and more female, with women now making up 42% of the total fanbase. The 2025 season also saw record-breaking race attendance of 6.7 million. The F1 deal is a cornerstone of Apple's broader live sports strategy, which includes a global partnership with Major League Soccer (MLS) and "Friday Night Baseball" for MLB. Unlike the standalone MLS Season Pass, all F1 content will be included within the main Apple TV subscription, a move designed to drive wider adoption. For fans attending races, the integration with Apple Maps provides practical location-based information, including walking directions to gates, grandstands, and amenities. This feature showcases a potential use-case for location-aware fan engagement, offering a layer of digital information over the physical venue. The move into immersive F1 coverage places Apple in competition with other tech giants like Meta, which has streamed WNBA games in 180-degree VR. It also competes with emerging "shared reality" venues like Cosm, which uses large LED domes to create communal immersive sports viewing experiences without headsets. In a surprising move, Apple is collaborating with rival Netflix, which has been credited with boosting F1's popularity through its "Drive to Survive" series. The latest season of the docuseries will be available on Apple TV in the U.S., and both platforms will simulcast the Canadian Grand Prix, cross-promoting the sport to a massive combined subscriber base.
