By Will Saunders, Vice President, Sponsorship + Consulting and Head of F1 at MKTG Sports + Entertainment

Introduction

It’s long been understood that F1’s 2026 regulations represent the biggest on-track overhaul in a generation, with completely new cars and power units wiping the slate clean and resetting the competitive order. Add in new teams, circuits, and drivers, and F1 will truly be racing into the unknown this year.

But what about off-track? While new regulations will reset the competitive order on the grid, the real contest in 2026 may be happening away from it. F1’s burgeoning global commercial and cultural activities demand almost as much attention as the races themselves. As investment surges and new players enter the ecosystem, the sport’s commercial landscape is becoming just as fiercely contested as the championship itself.

With that in mind, we’ve picked out three sponsor, fan engagement, and media trends that will be fascinating to watch when the new season gets underway in Melbourne this weekend.

The Sponsor Squeeze

With the addition of an eleventh team in Cadillac, and surging categories including AI, financial services, and apparel driving total sponsor investment in F1 to over $3 billion in 2026 per Ampere, brands are grappling with an unintended consequence of the sport’s success – more teams and more partners means less inventory to go around and a greater fight for sponsor share of voice and value.

That pressure is being felt most acutely in physical space – at the circuit itself, where access has become the ultimate premium currency.

At the track, with Paddock Club tickets becoming ever more of a challenge at key races, teams are developing their own trackside hospitality spaces to cater to the increased demand and provide a more tailored (and more affordable) team-led experience for sponsors. The Red Bull Energy Station pioneered this type of offering, with Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari all developing custom at-track hospitality in the past few years.

But scarcity isn’t just about square footage in hospitality suites – it’s about attention. And nowhere is that more evident than at F1’s new tentpole races.

Sponsors are also wrestling with the challenge of coalescing activity around the same tentpole events. The Miami GP in particular is both a blessing and a curse for brands as the race has become one of the crown jewels of F1’s commercial calendar. Given its position as the first global hub race after the early season flyaways, first local touchpoint of the season for US brands, diverse North meets South American audience, and ample hospitality and entertainment options, Miami is a favourite activation moment for teams and partners – making it harder than ever to deliver cut-through.

With the 2026 Miami GP set to feature several dedicated team fan zones and activations, multiple special liveries, not to mention an eye-catching new cruise ship themed hospitality space at track, we might see sponsors start to find that the competition for eyeballs in Miami and other key races doesn’t deliver the necessary visibility to justify activating.

The result is a paradox. The biggest races offer the biggest platforms – but also the most noise.

This could result in brands finding other ways to own the moment – counterprogramming at quieter races, activating between race weekends, or collaborating with other team partners to force-multiply their assets and create more impactful, differentiated activations.

The Hunt for White Space

If brands are feeling squeezed for space, the response from both F1 and the teams has been simple – create more of it.

With more partners comes an increased pressure to create ownable moments, and both F1 as a league, and the teams, are carving up their inventory to find new ways to create visibility and value for sponsors.

That white space is real and measurable. Per Dentsu Sports Analytics Decoding 360 survey, F1 fans over‑index for off‑track, experiential, and participatory engagement. Experiential activations outperform passive sponsorship by a wide margin – fans who participate in live activations over‑index by ~40%.

To provide that fan value, F1 continues to find innovative ways to offer fans the opportunity to participate in the race weekend experience. Gatorade Run the Track, launching in Melbourne this week, is a great example of F1 taking something that has existed organically for years (team and media personnel running a lap of the track after media day on Thursday), bringing in an endemic brand partner, and opening the experience up to allow fans a once in a lifetime opportunity to run a lap of a Grand Prix circuit in race weekend trim.

This is a clear signal of where the sport is heading – taking organic fan rituals and formalising them into sponsor-ready inventory.

This trend of F1 creating ownable inventory within the race weekend also manifested in 2025 through increased sponsor engagement with the driver parade, post-race celebrations and net new creations like American Express Grid Gigs. The F1-owned Las Vegas Grand Prix Plaza also opened as an always-on entertainment destination in 2025, creating a new product offering in a key market while allowing race partners to drive year-round value and engagement for their sponsorships.

But this expansion isn’t just league-led. Teams themselves are increasingly behaving like media and entertainment brands, building their own ecosystems beyond race day – increasingly developing off-track, downtown fan zones to offer more activation opportunities for their partners and attract and engage casual, non-race attending fans in market. Williams were first movers in this space and have expanded their offering to seven races for 2026. Other teams have caught on quickly, with McLaren's Trafalgar Square takeover ahead of the 2025 British GP raising the bar and Audi and others planning their own team-led activations this season to not just democratize the race week beyond the track, but to create ownable moments and build consistent, team-led brand equity.

New Ways to Fan

If inventory expansion defines the sponsorship landscape, distribution and data will define the fan economy. In 2026, that shift moves decisively into the streaming era.

The most significant change in the F1 media landscape for 2026 sees Apple acquiring broadcast rights in the US. Unlike a linear broadcaster though, the tech giant clearly views the broadcast as the floor for its partnership rather than the ceiling and has announced a wealth of fan engagement innovations that will weave F1 seamlessly into the Apple ecosystem.

Apple will pioneer a customisable multi-view feature and dedicated feeds and data channels for their broadcast, but more significant are the ways in which the brand will help F1 reach fans beyond their living rooms. The Apple Sports app will serve as an F1 hub on mobile. Push notifications to iPhone and Apple Watch and custom widgets on home screens will embed F1 into fans’ personal devices. Apple News, Maps, and Music will all have dedicated F1 output, and distribution deals with Netflix, IMAX, Tubi, alongside bars and restaurants, will not only give fans alternative ways to watch but help mitigate concerns about a potential drop in viewership in the US given the cost of an Apple TV subscription.

The strategic shift is clear – F1 is no longer just a broadcast product. It is becoming an embedded layer within fans’ daily digital lives as media platforms catch up to the reality that F1 fans are already participating in continuous, platform-native engagement. Decoding data shows that F1 fans over index on following sports and athletes on social media, consuming highlights, analysis, and updates beyond the live broadcast, and engaging across multiple channels, meaning the audience is ripe for the kind of digital ecosystem Apple is aspiring to deliver.  

And while Apple reshapes the top of the funnel, teams are building deeper owned relationships at the bottom.

Beyond traditional apps, which the likes of Williams, Ferrari, McLaren, and Alpine offer, teams are curating personalised communities that allow fans to access exclusive experiences, merchandise, and events. McLaren has just launched its McLaren Racing Club for the 2026 season, but the long-time market leader in this space is Aston Martin’s I/AM fan membership program – which offers fans a consistent stream of FOMO-driving opportunities including exclusive merch, collabs, event invites, and digital surprises.

There’s an old saying in F1 that if you’re standing still you’re going backwards. In 2026, that maxim can be as readily applied to the off-track contest for hearts, minds, and eyeballs as it can to the sporting competition. The grid may reset on track, but off-track the race is accelerating – and the teams and brands that understand that this is now a 365-day ecosystem will be the ones who truly pull ahead.