F1 fans blast Liberty Media CEO who says you don't need to watch every F1 race to be a fan

Chang spoke at an Axios and The Race Media event in Austin during the United States Grand Prix weekend. He was talking about F1's American broadcast deal with Apple TV, which began this season and replaced ESPN's coverage. That deal has been under scrutiny all year, because independent data suggests fewer US households are tuning in.

In Chang's view, the way supporters follow the championship has changed for good. "You no longer think about F1 as something that you've got to go to every race or watch every race on television to be a fan, right?" he said, as quoted by Sports Business Journal.

He accepted that Liberty would like a more devoted audience, but argued that this was unrealistic. "Now, we would love every person associated with F1 to follow F1 24 hours a day, go to every race or watch every race on TV, but we know that's not going to happen, right?"

Instead, Chang pointed to what fans do between races. He said 60 per cent of F1's "hundreds of millions" of fans engage with the sport every day through highlights, race previews and lifestyle content.

Many long-time followers took the remarks badly. Their criticism is that Liberty's increasingly entertainment-led approach undervalues the traditional audience, for whom watching every race was always part of following F1.

Several replies tied the comments directly to the Apple switch. One fan wrote that they had not watched a single race and said "since apple tv I've moved on". Another questioned the strategy: "I don't think telling fans it's okay to not watch every race isn't the best way to retain and gain new fans. Just saying."

Chang called Apple a "great partner" and said the platform had "performed exactly the way we thought and frankly even better" over the Austin weekend. However, neither F1, Liberty Media nor Apple has published viewing figures since the switch.

However, Samba data published by USA TODAY Sports in August found that eight of the nine races analysed had lower US household reach, with Miami down 68 per cent and Monaco down 66 per cent year on year. Liberty answered that total hours watched were up 13 per cent. Samba's own numbers also showed that the households still watching were staying with races for much longer.

The two sides are measuring different things, and Samba's method has also been questioned. AppleInsider argued that Samba's smart TV software has limited visibility of people watching through Apple hardware. Until official figures are released, Chang's argument that daily engagement matters as much as race viewing is likely to stay hard for many fans to accept.